A history of the four Georges and of William IV

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A HISTORY

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OF

THE FOUR GEORGES

AND OF

WILLIAM IV.

BY

JUSTIN McCarthy

AND

JUSTIN IIUNTLY McCARTHY

IN FOUR VOLUMES

Vol. III.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

1901

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Copyright, 190., by Ha«pei! & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

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CONTENTS

OF

THE THIRD VOLUME.

CHAPTER - PAGE

XLII. "SUPREME IRONIC PROCESSION" 1

XLIII. GEORGE AND THE DRAGONS 23

XLIV. THE "NORTH BRITON " 46

XLV. NUMBER FORTY-FIVE 57

XLVI. THE AMERICAN COLONIES 71

XLVII. EDMUND BURKE 93

XLVIII. THE STAMP ACT 102

XLIX. WILKES REDIVIVUS 115

L. THE SPIRIT OF JUNIUS 128

LI. CHARLES JAMES FOX 141

LII. ON THE CHARLES RIVER 147

LIII. THE "vicar OF WAKEFIELD" 167

LIV. YANKEE DOODLE 173

LV. THE GORDON RIOTS 190

LVI. TWO NEW MEN 211

LVII. FOX AND PITT 223

LVIII. WARREN HASTINGS 245

LIX. THE GREAT IMPEACHMENT '272

LX. THE CHANGE OF THINGS 290

LXI. " NINETY -EIGHT " 306

LXII. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 331

A HISTORY

OF

THE FOUR GEORGES.

CHAPTER XLII.

"supreme iroxic processiox."

For six and forty years England had been ruled by
German princes. One Elector of Hanover named George
had been succeeded bv another Elector of Hanover named
George, and George the First and George the Second,
George the father and George the son, resembled each other
in being by nature German rather than English, and by
inclination Electors of Hanover rather than Kings of Eng-
land. Against each of them a Stuart prince had raised a
standard and an army. George the First had his James
Francis Edward, who called himself James the Third, and
whom his opponents called the Pretender, by a translation
which gave an injurious signification to the French word
" pretendant." George the Second had his Charles Edward,
the Young Pretender who a generation later led an in-
vading army well into England before he had to turn and
fly for his life. A very different condition of things await-
ed the successor of George the Second. George the
Second's grandson was an English prince and an English-
man. He was born in England; his father was born in
England; his native tongue was the English tongue; and
if he was Elector of Hanover, that seemed an accident.

The title was as unimportant and trivial to the King of
VOL. ni. — 1

2 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

England as his title of King of France was unreal and
theatrical. The remnant of the Jacobites could not
with truth call the heir to the throne a foreigner, and
they could not in reason hope to make such a demonstra-
tion in arms against him as they had made against his
grandfather and his great-grandfather. The young King
came to a much safer throne under much more favorable
auspices than either of the two monarchs, his kinsmen and
his namesakeS;, who had gone before him.

The young King heard the first formal news of his
accession to the throne from the lips of no less stately a
personage than the Great Commoner himself — the foremost
Englishman then alive. George the Third, as he then
actually was, had received at Kew Palace some messages
which told him that his grandfather was sinking fast, that
he was dying, that he was dead. George resolved to start
for London. On his way, and not far from Kew, he was
met by a coach and six, which, from the blue and silver
liveries, he knew to be that of Mr. Pitt. George received
the congratulations of his great minister — the great Minis-
ter whom, as it was soon to appear, he understood so little
and esteemed so poorly. Then Pitt, turning his horses^
heads, followed his sovereign into London. Never perhaps
in English history was a young king welcomed on his
accession by so great a minister. Among the many auspi-
cious conditions which surrounded the early days of
George the Third's reign not the least auspicious was the
presence of such a bulwark to the throne and to the realm.
For the name of Pitt was now feared and honored in every
civilized country in the world. It had become synonymous
with the triumphs and the greatness of England. Pitt was
the greatest War Minister England had yet known. He
was the first English statesman who illustrated in his own
person the difference between a War Minister and a Minis-
ter of War.

Truly this journey of the King and the Prime Minister
from Kew to London was what George Meredith calls a
" supreme ironic procession, with laughter of gods in the
background." The ignorant, unwise young King led the

1760. ACCESSION OF GEORGE THE THIRD. 3

way, the greatest living statesman in England followed
after. One can hardly imagine a procession more su-
premely ironic. Almost all the whole range of human
intellect was stretched out and exhausted b}^ the living
contrast between the King who went first and the Minister
vrho meekly went second. Pitt had made for young
George the Third a great empire, which it was the work of
George the Third not long after to destroy, so far as its de-
struction could be compassed by the stupidity of a man.
Pitt had made the name of England a power all over the
civilized world. Rome at her greatest, Spain at her great-
est, could hardly have surpassed the strength and the
fame of England as Pitt had re-made it. George, from
the very first, felt a sort of coldness towards his superb
Minister. He had all the vague pervading jealousy which
dulness naturally shows to genius. It was a displeasure
to him from the first that Pitt should have made Eng-
land so great, because the work was the inspiration of the
subject and not of the sovereign. ]^o one can know for
certain what thoughts were filling the mind of George as
he rode to London that day in front of William Pitt. But
it may fairly be assumed that he was not particularly
sorry for the death of his grandfather, and that he was
pleasing his spirit with the idea that he would soon emanci-
pate himself from Mr. Pitt. " Be a king, George,'^ his
mother used to say to him. The unsifted youth was deter-
mined, if he could, to be a king.

At the time of his accession George was in his twenty-
third year. He was a decidedly personable young Prince.
He had the large regular features of his race, the warm
complexion of good health, and a vigorous constitution,
keen attractive eyes, and a firm, full mouth. He was tall
and strongly made, and carried himself with a carriage
that was dignified or stiff according to the interpretation
of those who observed it. Many of the courtly ladies
thought him extremely handsome, were eagerly gracious
to him, did their best to thrust themselves upon his atten-
tion, and received, it would seem, very little notice in re-
turn for their pains. If George showed himself indif-

4 A mi^TORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xui

ferent and even ungallant to his enthusiastic admirers,
his brother Edward Avas of a different disposition. But
though Edward, like his brother, was an agreeable-looking
youth, and keen to win favor in women's eyes, he found
himself like Benedict: nobodv marked him because he was
not the heir to the throne.

In some illustrated histories of the reign two portraits
of George the Third are placed in immediate and pathetic
contrast. The one portrait represents George as he showed
in the first year of his reign — alert, young, smiling, with
short-cut powdered hair, a rich flowered coat, and the star
and ribbon of the Garter on his breast. So might a young
king look called in the flower of his age to the control of
a great country, pleased, confident, and courageous. The
other picture shows how the King looked in the sixtieth
year of his reign. The face is old and wrinkled and weary ;
the straggling white locks escape from beneath a fur-
trimmed cap; the bowed body is wrapped in a fur-
trimmed robe. The time of two generations of men lay
between the young king and the old; the longest reign
then known to English history, the longest and the most
eventful.

George the Third started with many advantages over
his predecessors of the same name. He was an English-
man. He spoke the English language. It w^as his sincere
wdsh to be above all things English. He honestly loved
English ways. He had not the faintest desire to start a
seraglio in England. He had no German mistresses. He
did not care about fat women. He was devoted to his
mother — perhaps a good deal too devoted, but even the
excess of devotion might have been pardonable in the pub-
lic opinion of England; certainly it was only his own
weakness and perversity that made it for a while not
pardonable. He was of the country squire's order of mind ;
his tastes were wholly those of the stolid, well-intentioned,
bucolic country squire. He would probably have been a
very respectable and successful sovereign if only he had
not been plagued by the ambition to be a king.

It is curious to remember that the accession of George

1760. GEORGE'S QUALIFICATIONS FOR KING. 5

the Third was generally and joyfully welcomed. A hope-
ful people, having endured with increasing dislike two
sovereigns of the House of Hanover, were quite prepared
to believe that a third prince was rich in all regal qualities.
in all public and private virtues. It would, perhaps, have
been unreasonable on the part of any dispassionate ob-
server of public affairs to anticipate that a third George
would make a worse monarch than his namesakes and
immediate predecessors. The dispassionate observer might
have maintained that there were limits to kingly mis-
government in a kingdom endowed with a Constitution
and blessed with a measure of Parliamentary representa-
tion, and that those limits had been fairly reached by the
two German princes who ruled reluctantly enough over
the fortunes of England. This same dispassionate ob-
server might reasonably, assuming him to possess familiar
knowledge of certain facts, have hazarded the prediction
that George the Third would be a better king than his
grandfather and his great-grandfather. He was certainly
a better man. There was so much of a basis whereupon to
build a hope of better things. The profligacy of his an-
cestors had not apparently vitiated his blood and judg-
ment. His young life had been a pure life. He was in
that way a pattern to princes. He had been, which was
rare with his race, a good son. He was to be — and there
was no more rare quality in one of his stock — a good
husband, a good father. He was in his way a good friend
to his friends. He was sincerely desirous to prove himself
a good king to his people.

The youth of George the Third had passed under some-
what agitated conditions. George the Second's straight-
forward hatred for his son's wife opened a great gulf
between the Court and Leicester House, which no true
courtier made any effort to bridge. While the young
Prince knew, in consequence, little or nothing of the atmos-
phere of St. James's or the temper of those who breathed
that atmosphere, attempts were not wanting to sunder him
from the influence of his mother. Some of the noblemen
and clergymen to whom the early instruction of the young

6 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

Prince was entrusted labored with a persistency which
would have been admirable in some other cause to sever
him not merely from all his father's friends but even
from his father's wife. There was indeed a time when
their efforts almost succeeded in alienating the young
Prince from his mother. The wildest charges of Jacobi-
tism were brought against the immediate servants of the
Princess, charges which those who made them wholly
failed to substantiate. The endeavor to remove the Prince
from the tutelage of his mother was abandoned. The
education of the Prince was committed to more sympa-
thetic care. The change had its advantage in keeping
George in the wholesome atmosphere of Leicester House
instead of exposing him to the temptations of a profligate
Court. It had its disadvantages in leaving him entirely
under the influence of a man to whose guidance, counsel,
and authority the Princess Dowager absolutely submitted
herself.

Observers of the lighter sort are pleased to insist upon
the trifles which have the most momentous influence upon
the fortunes of peoples and the fates of empires. A
famous and facile French playwright derived the down-
fall of a favorite and of a political revolution from the
spilling of a glass of water. There are times when the
temptation to pursue this thread of fancy is very great.
Suppose, for instance, it had not chanced to rain on a
certain day at Clifden, when a cricket match was being
played in which Frederick, Prince of Wales, happened to
be interested. A fretted Prince Avould not have had to
retire to his tent like Achilles, would not have insisted
on a game of whist to cheer his humor. There would
have been no difficulty in forming a rubber. There would
have been no need to seek for a fourth hand. No wistful
gentleman-in-attendance seeking the desirable would have
had to ask the aid of a strange nobleman perched in an
apothecary's chariot. Had this strange nobleman not been
so sought and found, had the apothecary not been wealthy
enough to keep a chariot, and friendly enough to offer a
poor Scotch gentleman a seat in it, it is possible that the

1760. LORD BUTE. 7

American Colonies might yet form portion and parcel of
the British Empire, that Chatham's splendid dreams might
have become still more splendid realities, that the name
of Wilkes might never have emerged from an obscurity
of debauch to association with the name of liberty. For
the nobleman who made the fourth hand in the Prince of
Wales's rubber was unfortunately a man of agreeable
address and engaging manners, manners that pleased in-
finitely the Prince of Wales, and cemented a friendship
most disastrous in its consequences to England, to the Eng-
lish j)eople, and to an English king. The name of the en-
gaging nobleman was Lord Bute.

At the time of this memorable game of whist Lord Bute
was thirty-six years old. He was well educated, well read,
tall of body, pleasing of countenance, quick in intelligence,
and curious in disposition. These qualities won the heart
of the Prince of Wales, and lifted the young Scotch noble-
man from poverty and obscurity to prominence and favor.
The Prince appointed Bute a Lord of the Bedchamber
and welcomed him to his most intimate friendship. The
death of the Prince of Wales two years later had no disas-
trous effect upon the rising fortunes of the favorite. The
influence which Bute had exercised over the mind of
Frederick he exercised over the mind of Frederick's wife
and over the mind of Frederick's heir. Scandal whisper-
ed, asserted, insisted then and has insisted ever since, that
the influence which Lord Bute exercised over the Princess
of Wales was not merely a mental influence. How far
scandal was right or wrong there is no means, there prob-
ably never will be any means, of knowing. Lord Bute's
defenders point to his conspicuous affection for his wife,
Edward Wortley Montagu's only daughter, in contraven-
tion of the scandal. Undoubtedly Bute was a good hus-
band and a good father. Whether the scandal was justi-
fied or not, the fact that it existed, that it was widely blown
abroad and very generally believed, was enough. As far
as the popularity of the Princess was concerned it might as
well have been justified. For years no caricature was so
popular as that which displayed the Boot and the Petti-

8 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

coat, the ironic popular symbols of Lord Bute and the
Princess.

By whatever means Lord Bute gained his influence over
the Princess of Wales, he undoubtedly possessed the influ-
ence and used it with disastrous effect. He moulded the
feeble intelligence of the young Prince George; he guided
his thoughts, directed his studies in statecraft, and was to
all intents and purposes the governor of the young Prince's
person. The young Prince could hardly have had a worse
adviser. Bute was a man of many merits, but his defects
were in the highest degree dangerous in a person who had
somehow become possessed of almost absolute power. In
the obscurity of a private life, the man who had borne
poverty with dignity at an age when poverty was pecul-
iarly galling to one of his station might have earned the
esteem of his immediate fellows. In the exaltation of a
great if an unauthorized rule, and later in the authority
of an important public office, his defects were fatal to his
fame and to the fortunes of those who accepted his sway.
For nearly ten years, from the death of Frederick, Prince
of Wales, to the death of George the Second, Bute was all-
powerful in his influence over the mother of the future
King and over the future King himself. When the young
Prince came to the throne Lord Bute did not immediately
assume ostensible authority. He remained the confidential
adviser of the young King until 1761. In 1761 he took
office, assuming the Secretaryship of State resigned by
Lord Holdernesse. From a secretaryship to the place of
Prime Minister was but a step, and a step soon taken.
Although he did not occupy office very long, he held it
long enough to become perhaps the most unpopular Prime
Minister England has ever had.

The youth of George the Third was starred with a
strange romance. The full truth of the story of Hannah
Lightfoot will probably never be known. What is known
is sufficiently romantic without the additions of legend.
Hannah Lightfoot was a beautiful Quaker girl, the daugh-
ter of a decent tradesman in Wapping. Association with
the family of an uncle, a linendraper, who lived near the

1760. HANNAH LIGHTFOOT AND LADY SARAH LENNOX. 9

Court, brought the girl into the fashionable part of the
town. The young Prince saw her by accident somehow,
somewhere, in the early part of 1754, and fell in love with
her. From that moment the girl disappears from certain
knowledge, and legend busies itself with her name. It is
asserted that she was actually married to the young Prince ;
that William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, was
present at the marriage; that she bore the Prince several
children. Other versions have it that she was married as a
mere form to a man named Axford, who immediately
left her, and that after this marriage she lived with the
Prince. She is supposed to have died in a secluded villa in
Hackney. It is said that not only the wife of George the
Third but the wife of George the Fourth believed that
the marriage had taken place. We must not attach too
much importance to a story which in itself is so very un-
likely. It is in the last degree improbable that a states-
man like Pitt would have lent himself to so singular a
proceeding. Even if an enamoured young Prince were
prepared to sanction his affections by a marriage, he would
scarcely have found an assistant in the ablest politician
of the age. The story of the Axford marriage is far more
probable. If Hannah Lightfoot had been married to
George she would have been Queen of England, for there
was no Royal Marriage Act in those days.

Another and more famous romance is associated with
the youth of George the Third. Lady Sarah Lennox, the
youngest daughter of the second Duke of Richmond, was
one of the most beautiful women of her time. The writers
of the day rave about her, describe her as *^ an angel," as
lovelier than any Magdalen by Correggio. When she was
only seventeen years old her beauty attracted the young
King, who soon made no secret of his devotion to her.
The new passion divided the Court into two camps. The
House of Lennox was eager to bring about a marriage,
which was not then obstructed by the law. Henry Fox,
one of the most ambitious men of that time or of any
time, was Lady Sarah's brother-in-law, and he did his
best to promote the marriage. On the other hand, the

10 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

party which followed the lead of the Princess Dowager
and Lord Bute fought uncomproinisingl}^ against the
scheme. The Princess Dowager had everything to lose,
Lord Bute had everything to lose, by such an alliance.
The power of the Princess Dowager over the young King
would vanish, and the influence of Lord Bute over the
Princess Dowager would cease to have any political im-
portance. Lord Bute did all he could to keep the lovers
apart. Henry Fox did all he could to bring the lovers
together. For lovers they undoubtedly were. George
again and again made it plain to those who were in his
confidence that he was in love with Lady Sarah, and was
anxious to make her his queen; and Lady Sarah, though
her heart is said to have been given to Lord Newbottle,
was quite ready to yield to the wishes of her family when
those wishes were for the crown of Enojland. On the
meadows of Holland House the beautiful girl, loveliest of
Arcadian rustics, would play at making hay till her royal
lover came riding by to greet her.

But the idyll did not end in the marriage for which Fox
and the Lennoxes hoped. It is said that the King was
jealous of Lord Newbottle; it is said that a sense of duty
to his place and to his people made him resolve to subdue
and sacrifice his own personal feelings. He offered his
hand and his crown to the Princess of Mecklenburg-
Strelitz. Lady Sarah lost both her lovers, the King and
Lord Newbottle, who, in the words of Grenville, " com-
plained as much of her as she did of the King.'^ But she
did not remain long unmarried. In 1762 she accepted as
husband the famous sporting Baronet Sir Thomas Charles
Bunbury, and nineteen years later she married the Hon.
George Napier, and became the mother of an illustrious
pair of soldier brothers. Sir Charles Napier, the hero of
Scinde, and Sir William Napier, perhaps the best military
historian since Julius Caesar. Lady Sarah died in 1826,
in her eighty-second year. In her later years she had be-
come totally blind, and she bore her affliction with a sweet
patience. At her death she is described by the chroniclers
of the time as " probably the last surviving great-grand-

1T60. PRINCESS CHARLOTTE SOPHIA. H

daughter of King Charles the Second." A barren honor,
surely.

The young Princess whom George married was in many
ways well and even excellently qualified to make a good
queen. It is said that she was discovered for her young
husband after a fashion something resembling a tale from
the "Arabian Xights." The Princess Dowager, eager to
counteract the fatal effect of the beauty of Lady Sarah
Lennox, was anxious to have the young King married as
soon as possible. Her own wishes were in favor of a
daughter of the House of Saxe-Gotha, but it is said that
fear of a disease hereditary in the family overruled her
wishes. Then, according to the story, a Colonel Graeme,
a Scotch gentleman upon whose taste Lord Bute placed
great reliance, was sent on a kind of roving embassy to the
various little German Courts in search of the ideal bride.
The lad}^ of the quest was, according to the instructions
given to Colonel Graeme, to be at once beautiful, healthy,
accomplished, of mild disposition, and versed in music,
an art to which the King was much devoted. Colonel
Graeme, with this pleasing picture of feminine graces
ever in his mind, found the original of the portrait in
Charlotte Sophia, the second daughter of Charles Lewis
Frederick, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

There is another version of the manner of George's woo-
ing which nullifies the story of Colonel Graeme's romantic
mission. According to this other version George fell in
love with his future queen simply from reading a letter
written by her. The tale sounds as romantic as that of the
Provencal poet's passion for the portrait of the Lady of
Tripoli. It is true, however, that the letter of Charlotte
Sophia was something of the nature of a state paper. The
Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of which the Princess
Charlotte's brother was the sovereign, had been overrun
by the troops of the King of Prussia. The young Princess
wrote a letter to the Prussian King, which came to George's
notice and inspired him, it is said, with the liveliest admira-
tion for the lady who penned it. Whatever the actual
reason, whether the report of Colonel Graeme or the

12 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

charms of her epistolary style, the certain thing is that
George was married, first by proxy and afterwards in due
form, to the young Princess in 1761. The young Princess
was not remarkably beautiful. Even the courtiers of the
day, anxious to say their strongest in her praise, could not
do much more than commend her eyes and complexion
and call her " a very fine girl," while those who were not
inclined to flatter said her face was all mouth, and de-
clared, probably untruly, that the young King was at first
obviously repelled by the plainness of his wife's appear-
ance. If she was plain, her plainness, as Northcote, the
painter, said, was an elegant, not a vulgar plainness, and
the grace of her carriage much impressed him. Walpole
found her sensible, cheerful, and remarkably genteel, a
not inconsiderable eulogy from him. She was fairly edu-
cated, as the education of princesses went in those days.
She knew French and Italian, knew even a little English.
She had various elegant accomplishments — could draw,
and dance, and play, had acquired a certain measure of
scientific knowledge, and she had what was better than all
these attainments, a good, kindly, sensible nature. The
marriage could hardly be called a popular marriage at
first. Statesmen and politicians thought that the King of
England ought to have found some more illustrious con-
sort than the daughter of a poor and petty German House.
The people at large, we are told from a private letter of
the time, were " quite exasperated at her not being hand-
some," beauty in a sovereign being a great attraction to
the mass of subjects. The courtiers in general were
amused by, and secretly laughed at, her simple ways and
old-fashioned — or at least un-English — manners.

After the wedding came the coronation, a very resplend-
ent ceremony, which was not free from certain somewhat
ludicrous features, and was not denied a certain tragic
dignity. It was enormously expensive. Horace Walpole
called it a puppet-show that cost a million. Loyal London
turned out in its thousands. Surprisingly large sums of
money were paid for rooms and scaffolds from which the
outdoor sight could be seen, and much larger were paid

1761. THE COROXATIOX OF GEORGE THE THIRD. 13

for places inside the Abbey. It was very gorgeous, very
long, and very fatiguing. The spectator carried away,
with aching senses, a confused memory of many soldiers,
of great peers ill at ease in unbecoming habits, of beautiful
women beautifully attired, of a blaze of jewels that recalled
the story of Aladdin's mine, and of the wonderful effect
by which the darkness of Westminster Hall was suddenly
illuminated by an ingenious arrangement of sconces that
caught fire and carried on the message of light with great
rapidity. The heralds in whose hands the ceremonial
arrangements lay bungled their business badly, causing
fierce heartburnings by confusions in precedence, and
displaying a lamentable ignorance of the names and the
whereabouts of many wearers of stately and ancient titles.
When the King expressed his annoyance at some of the
blunders, Lord Effingham, the Earl Marshal, offered, for
amazing apology, the assurance that the next coronation
would be conducted with perfect order, an unfortunate
speech, which had, however, the effect of affording the
King infinite entertainment. The one tragic touch in the
whole day's work may be legend, but it is legend that
might be and that should be truth. When Dymoke, the
King's Champion, rode, in accordance with the antique
usage, along Westminster Hall, and flung his glove down
in challenge to any one who dared contest his master's
right to the throne of England, it is said that some one
darted out from the crowd, picked up the glove, slipped
back into the press, and disappeared, without being stopped
or discovered. According to one version of the incident, it
was a woman who did the deed; according to another it
Avas Charles Edward himself, the Young Pretender — now
no longer so very young — who made this last protest on
behalf of his lost fortunes and his fallen House. It is
possible, it is even probable, that Charles Edward was in
London then and thereafter, and it seems certain that if
he was in London King George knew of it and ignored it
in a chivalrous and kingly way. The Young Pretender
could do no harm now. Stuart hopes had burned high for
a moment, fifteen years earlier, when a handsome young

14 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.xlii.

Prince carried his invading flag halfway through England,
and a King who was neither handsome nor young was ready
to take ship from Tower Stairs if worse came of it. But
those hopes were quenched now, down in the dust, extin-
guished forever. No harm could come to the House of
Hanover, no harm could come to the King of England, if
at Lady Primrose's house in St. James's Square a party
should be interrupted by the entrance of an unexpected
guest, of a man prematurely aged by dissipation and dis-
appointment, a melancholy ruin of what had once been
fair and noble, and in whom his amazed and reverent
hostess recognized the last of the fated Stuarts. There
were spies among those who still professed adherence
to Charles Edward and allegiance to his line, spies bearing
names honorable in Scottish history, who were always
ready to keep George and George's ministers posted in the
movements of the unhappy Prince they betrayed. George
could afford to be magnanimous, and George was magnani-
mous. If it pleased the poor Pretender to visit, like a
premature ghost, the city and the scenes associated with
his House and its splendor and its awful tragedies, he did
so untroubled and unharmed. It was but a cast of the
dice in Fortune's fingers, and Charles Edward would have
been in Westminster Hall and had a champion to assert
his right. But the cast of the dice went the other way,
and George the Third was King, and his little German
Princess was Queen of England.

It is probable that those early days in London were the
happiest in the little Queen's long life. She had come
from exceeding quiet to a great and famous city; she was
the centre of splendor; she was surrounded by splendid
figures ; she was the first lady of a great land ; she was the
queen of a great king; she was the fortunate wife of a
loyal, honorable, and pure-minded man. She was young,
she was frank, she was fond of all innocent pleasures,
keenly alive to all the entertainment that Court and
capital could ofi'er her. She crammed more gayeties into
the first few days of her marriage than she had dreamed
of in all her previous life. The girl, who had never seen

1761. THE LONDON GAYETIES OF THE TIME. 15

the sea until she took ship for England, had never seen a
play acted until she came to London. Mecklenburg- Stre-
litz had its own strong ideas about the folly and frivolity
of the stage, and no Puritan maiden in the sternest days
of Cromwellian ascendency, no Calvinist daughter of the
most rigorous Scottish household, could have been edu-
cated in a more austere ignorance of the arts that are sup-
posed to embellish and that are intended to amuse exist-
ence. She went to playhouse after playhouse, alarmed
at the crowds that thronged the streets to see her, but
fascinated by the delights that awaited her within the
walls. She attended the opera. She saw " The Beggar's
Opera,*^ which may have charmed her for its story without
perplexing her by its satire. She saw " The Rehearsal,"
and did not dream that twenty years later the humors of
Bayes, which she probably did not understand, would be
eclipsed forever by the fantasies of Mr. Puff. She car-
ried the King to Ranelagh, to that amazing, enchanting
assembly where all the world made masquerade, and man-
darins, harlequins, shepherdesses, and much-translated
pagan divinities jostled each other through Armida's
gardens, where the pink of fashion and the plain citizen,
the patrician lady and the plebeian waiting-maid made
merry together in a motley rout of Comus, and marvelled
at the brilliancy of the illuminations and the many-colored
glories of the fireworks.

The London to which the little Princess came, and which
she found so full of entertainment, was a very different
London from the city for which the first of the Georges
had quitted reluctantly the pleasures of Hanover and the
gardens of Herrenhausen. The Hanoverian princes had
never tried, as the Stuart sovereigns had tried, to stop by
peremptory legislation the spread of the metropolis. Lon-
don had been steadily spreading in the half-century of
Guelph dominion, eating up the green fields in all direc-
tions, linking itself with little lonely hamlets and tiny
rustic villages, and weaving them close into the web of its
being, choking up rural streams and blotting out groves
and meadows with monuments of brick and mortar. Where

16 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

the friends of George the First could have hunted and
gunned and found refreshment in secluded country ale-
houses, the friends of George the Third were familiar with
miles of stony streets and areas of arid squares. London
was not then the monster city that another century and
a half has made it, but it was even more huge in its pro-
portion to the size of any of its rivals, if rivals they could
be called, among the large towns of England. The great
city did not deserve the adjective that is applied to it by
the poet of Chevy Chase. London was by no means lovely.
However much it might have increased in size, it had in-
creased very little in beauty, and not at all in comfort
since the days when an Elector of Hanover became King
of England. It still compared only to its disadvantage
with the centres of civilization on the Continent; it still
was rich in all the dangers and all the discomforts Gay
had celebrated nearly two generations earlier. And these
dangers and discomforts were not confined to London.
The world beyond London was a world of growing pro-
vincial towns and increasing seaports connected by toler-
able and sometimes admirable highways, and of smaller
towns and villages reduced for the most part to an almost
complete isolation by roads that were always nearly and
often quite impassable. To travel much in England in
those days was scarcely less adventurous even for an Eng-
lishman than to travel in Africa to-day; for a foreigner
the adventure was indeed environed by perils.

Dress and manners had changed in the Hanoverian half-
century, though not as much as they were to change in the
fifty years that were still in futurity. Extravagance of
attire still persisted, though. the extravagance had changed
its expression. The gigantic hoops in which ladies had de-
lighted had diminished, had dwindled, and gowns were of
a slender seemliness. But reformed below, fantasy rioted
above. The headdresses of women in the early days of the
third George were as monstrous, as horrible, and as shape-
less in their way as the hideous hoops had been in theirs.
Vast pyramids of false hair were piled on the heads of
fashionable ladies, were pasted together with pomatums,

ITfil. FASHIONS UNDER GEORGE THE THIRD. 17

were smothered in powder and pricked with feathers like
the headgear of a savage. These odious erections took
so long to build up that they were suffered to remain in
their ugly entirety not for days but for weeks together,
until the vast structure became a decomposing mass. It
is rather ghastly to remember that youth and beauty and
grace allowed itself to be so loathsomely adorned, that
the radiant women whose faces smile from the canvases
of great painters, and whose names illuminate the chroni-
cles of the wasted time of the reign of George the Third,
were condemned to dwell with corruption in consenting
to be caricatured. Till far on in the lifetime of Queen
Charlotte the fashion in women's wear oscillated from one
extreme to another, the gracious of to-day becoming the
grotesque of yesterday, and mode succeeding mode with the
confusion and fascination of a masquerade.

The men were no less remarkable than the women for
the clothes they wore, no less capricious in their changes.
A decided, if not a conspicuous, turn of public taste had
done much since the accession of the first George to mini-
mize if not to obliterate the differences between class and
class. Men no longer consented readily to carry the badge
of their calling in their daily costume, and the great world
came gradually to be no longer divided sharply from the
little world by marked distinction of dress. But still,
and for long after 1760, the clothes of men were scarcely
less brilliant, scarcely less importunate in their demands
unon the attention of their wearers, than the clothes of
women. Men made a brave show in those days. A group
of men might be as strong in color and as vivid in contrast
as a group of women; the neutralization of tone, the degra-
dation of hue, did not begin till much later, and only con-
quered in the cataclysm of the birth-throes of two repub-
lics. Blue and scarlet, green and yellow, crimson and
})urple, orange and plum-color were the daily wear of the
well-to-do; and even for the less wealthy there were the
warm browns and murreys, the bottle-greens and clarets,
and lavenders and buffs which made any crowd a thing to
please a painter in the eighteenth century. In all the

18 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

varying breeds of beaux and macaronis and dandies, of
bucks and fribbles, into which the fine gentlemen of the age
allowed themselves to be classified, the one dominant feat-
ure, the one common characteristic, was the love for gold
and silver and fine laces, for gaudiness of color and rich-
ness of ornament, for every kind of exquisite extravagance,
every refinement in foppishness. There was a passion for
the punctilio of dress, for the grace of a gold-headed cane
and a chased sword-hilt, for the right ribbon, the right
jewel, the right flower, and the right perfume, for the
right powder in the hair and the right seals on the fob
and the right heels and buckles on the shoes. There was
an ardent appreciation, an uncompromising worship of the
fine feathers that make fine birds.

The social system of the polite world had been slowly
changing with the successive Georges. The familiar events
in the lives of the well-to-do classes were growing steadily
later. The dinner hour, which was generally at noon or
one in the reign of Queen Anne, had crept on to three
o'clock under the first, and to four o'clock under the
second George. Under the third it was to grow later and
later, until it made Horace Walpole rage as if the world
were coming to an end because among fashionable folk
it had settled itself at six o'clock. In the country, indeed,
for the most part people lived the quiet lives and kept the
early hours of Sir Roger de Coverley. But, however, Lon-
don lived, and whatever London chose to do, England's
simple honest King and England's simple honest Queen
would have no concern with the follies of fashion and the
luxuries of late hours. However much the rashness and
wrong-headedness of his public policy forced him to ac-
cept the services and prime the pockets of a gang of
drunkards and debauchees who called themselves and
were called the King's friends, the evil communications
had not the slightest influence upon the royal good man-
ners, and did not alter by one jot the rigid frugality of
George's life and that of his royal consort. The King's
friends were only the King's jackals; they never were suf-
fered for a moment to cross the line which severed the

1761. THE WINE-DRINKING PllOPENSITIES OF THE AGE. 19

sovereign's private life from his public actions. Indeed,
it may be assumed that few of the hard-drinking, hard-
living, gambling, raking ruffians who battened on the
King's bounty, and who voted white black and good bad
with uncompromising pertinacity and unappeasable relish,
would have welcomed the hard seats at the royal table,
the meagre fare on the royal platters, the homely countri-
fied air the royal couple breathed, and the homely countri-
fied hour at which the royal couple took up their candles
and went to bed. George the Third would be long asleep
at an hour when his friends would be thinking of paying
a visit to Ranelagh, or preparing to spend a pleasant even-
ing over their cards, their dice-box, and their wine.

Especially their wine. The one great characteristic of
the gentility of the day was its capacity for drinking wine.
" Wine, dear child, and truth," says a Greek poet, naming
the two most admirable gifts of life. Truth was not always
very highly prized by the men who set manners and made
history in the second half of the eighteenth century, but
to wine they clung with an absolutely unswerving and un-
alterable attachment. If the great Oriental scholar who
adorned the age had been more fortunate in his studies, if
Sir William Jones had chanced to make acquaintance with
a Persian poet who has since become very famous among
Englishmen, he would have found in the quatrains of
Omar Khayyam the very verses to please the minds and
to interpret the desires of the majority of the statesmen,
soldiers, divines, lawyers, and fine gentlemen of the day.
It is as impossible to imagine the men of the eighteenth
centurv without their incessant libations of wine as it is
impossible to imagine what the eighteenth century would
have been like if it had been for the most part abstemious,
sober, or even reasonably temperate. As we read the me-
moirs of the day, and if we believe only a part of what
they tell us, making the most liberal allowance for the
exaggeration of the wit and the satire of the cynic, we have
to picture the political and social life of the time as a
drunken orgy. Undoubtedly there were then, as always,
men of decent behavior and discreet life, men who would

20 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlii.

no more have exceeded in wine than in any other way.
But the temper of the age and the tone of the fashionable
world was not in tune with their austerity. Wonder at the
frequency with which men of position got drunk then is
only rivalled by wonder at the amount which they could
drink without getting drunk.

The cry of the Persian nightingale to the Persian rose,
" wine, wine, wine," was the cry to which hearts responded
most readily in all the Georgian era. Walpole the father
made Walpole the son drink too much, that he might not
be unfilially sober while his father was unpaternally drunk.
A generation later the younger Pitt plied himself with
port as a medicine for the gout. The statesmen of the
period, in the words of Sir George Trevelyan, sailed on a
sea of claret from one comfortable official haven to an-
other. The amount of liquor consumed by each man at a
convivial gathering was Gargantuan, prodigious, hardly to
be credited. Thackeray tells, in some recently published
notes for his lectures on the four Georges, of a Scotch
judge who was forced to drink water for two months, and
being asked what was the effect of the regime, owned that he
saw the world really as it was for the first time for twenty
years; For a quarter of a century he had never been quite
sober. This man might be taken as a type of the bons
vivants, the huveurs tres illustres of the eighteenth cen-
tury. They were never quite sober all through their lives.
They never saw the world as it really was. They pleaded,
preached, debated, fought, gambled, loved, and hated
under the influence of their favorite vintage, saw all things
through a vinous fume, and judged all things with in-
flamed pulses and a reeling brain. But it must not be
forgotten that the population of the country was not en-
tirely composed of corrupt, hard-drinking politicians, prof-
ligate, hard-drinking noblemen, and furious, hard-drink-
ing country gentlemen. If these were, in a sense, the
more conspicuous types, there were other types very dif-
ferent and very admirable. Apart from the great mass
of the people, living their dull daily lives, doing their
dull daily tasks, quiet, ignorant, unconscious that they

1761. UNPROPITIOUS TIME FOR THE KING'S RULE. ^1

could or should ever have any say in the disposition of
their existences, there were both in town and country
plenty of decent, sober, honorable, and upright men and
women who had nothing in common with the fine gentle-
men and the fine ladies who fill the historical fashion
plates. If, unfortunately, Squire Western and Parson
Truliber were true pictures, at least Parson Adam and Sir
Eoger de Coverley still held good. None the less a young,
self-willed King, not too intelligent and not too well edu-
cated, could scarcely have come to his sovereignty at a
time less like to be fruitful of good for him or for the
country that he was resolved to govern.

22 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.xliii.

CHAPTER XLIII.

GEORGE AND THE DRAGONS.

The King was not lucky in his first act of sovereignty.
In his speech at the opening of Parliament on Novemljcr
18, 1760, he used a form of words which lie. and some of
those who advised him, evidently believed to be eminently
calculated to advance his popularity. " Born and edu-
cated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton," the
King said; and the words would seem to suggest such an
intimacy of association between the King and the kingdom
as must needs knit the hearts of ruler and of ruled more
closely together. Yet the choice of words gave offence in
certain quarters, and for two quite distinct reasons. Many
of the adherents and admirers of the late King — for even
George the Second had his admirers — were indignant at the
contrast which the new King seemed deliberately to draw
between himself and his grandfather. In accentuating the
fact that he was born and bred in England, George the
Third appeared by imputation to be casting a slur upon the
German nature and German prejudices of George the Sec-
ond. This boast, however much it might offend the feelings
of the friends of the late King, was not at all calculated to
affect the mass of the public, who had little love for George
the Second, and whose affection for the new King was
based mainly on the hope and the assumption that he
would prove to be as unlike the old King as possible. But
there was another interpretation to be put upon the royal
words which was likely to cause a wider impression and a
wider hostility. It would seem that some of the King's
advisers wished him to write that he gloried in the name of
Englishman; it would even seem that the King had actu-
ally used this word in the written draft of his speech.

1760. GEORGE THE THIRD AS A "BRITOX." 23

Lord Bute, it was said, had struck out the word " English-
man/' and had induced the King to accept the word
" Briton ^' as a substitute. The difference would not be
quite without moment now: it appeared very momentous
to many then, who read in the word chosen a most con-
vincing proof of the Scotch influence behind the throne.
The King's pride in styling himself a Briton was taken to
be, what indeed it was, evidence of his affection for the
Scotch peer who had been so lately sworn into his Privy
Council ; and the alarm and indignation of all who resent-
ed the Scotch influence was very great. The Duke of New-
castle in especial was irritated by the use of the word
" Briton," and the evidence it forced upon him of his own
waning influence and the waxing power of Bute. He even
went so far as to wish that some notice should be taken of
the " royal words " both in the motion and the address ;
but in the end he and those who thought with him felt
that they must submit and stifle their anger for the
time, and so the King, unchallenged, proclaimed himself a
Briton.

Whatever else George had learned in the days of his
tutelage, he had learned to form an ideal of what a king
should be and a determination to realize that ideal in his
own rule. The old idea of the personal authority of the
sovereign seemed to be passing away, to be dropping out
of the whole scheme and S3'stem of the English Constitu-
tion along with the belief in the theory of the Divine right
of kings. The new King, however, was resolved to prove
that he was the head of the state in fact as well as in name ;
that with his own hands he would restore to himself the
power and authority which his grandfather and his great-
grandfather had allowed unwisely to slip through their
fingers. The difficulties in the way of such an enterprise
might very well have disheartened any being less head-
strong, any spirit less stubborn. There were forces opposed
to him that seemed to overmatch his puny purpose as much
as the giants overmatched the pigmy hero of the nursery
tale. St. George in the chivalrous legend had but one
dragon to destroy; the young royal St. George set himself

24 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

with a light heart to attack a whole brood of dragons —
the dragons of the great Whig party.

When George the Third came to the throne the govern-
ment of the country was entirely in the hands of the
Whigs. The famous stately Whig Houses, the Houses of
Cavendish, of Eussell, of Temple, of Bentinck, of Man-
ners, of Fitzroy, of Lennox, of Conway, of Pelham, of
Wentworth, were as little subservient to the sovereign as
the great Frankish nobles who stood about the throne of
the Do-nothing kings. The Tory party was politically
almost non-existent. No Tory filled any office, great or
little, that was at the disposal of the Whigs, and the Whigs
had retained their ascendency for well-nigh half a cen-
tury. Jacobitism had been the ruin of the Tory cause.
All Tories were not Jacobites, but, roughly speaking, all
Jacobites were Tories, and there were still, even at the
date of George's accession, stout-hearted, thick-headed Tory
gentlemen who believed in or vaguely hoped for a pos-
sible restoration of a Stuart prince. It is curious to find
that, though the Whig. ranks stood fast in defence of the
House of Hanover, had made that House, and owed their
ascendency to their loyalty to that House, the latest
Hanoverian sovereign not only disliked them, but dealt
them blow after blow until he overthrew their rule. The
Tories, who sighed for a Stuart prince over the water,
suddenly found to their astonishment that they had a
friend in the Hanoverian Guelph, whose name they hated,
whose right to the throne they challenged, and whose
authority they derided, when they dared not despise.

It cannot be denied that the Whigs had often abused,
and more than abused, the privileges which their long lease
of power had given to them. All political parties ruled
by corruption during the last century. The Whig was not
more corrupt than the Tory, but it can hardly be main-
tained that he was less corrupt. The great Whig Houses
bought their way to power with resolute unscrupulousness.
A majority in either House was simply a case of so much
money down. The genius of Walpole had secured his own
pre-eminence at the cost of the almost total degradation

1761. THE CORRUPT METHODS OF THE WHIG PARTY. 25

of the whole administrative system of the country. When
George the Third came to the throne the Whigs were
firmly established in a powerful league of bigotry and in
tolerance, cemented by corruj^tion, by bribery, by purchase
of the most uncompromising, of the basest kind. George
the Third had fostered through youthful years of silence
those strong ideas of his own about the importance of the
kingly office which he was now to proclaim by his deeds.
In the way of those strong ideas, in the way of the stead-
fast determination to be King in fact as well as in name,
stood the great Whig faction, flushed with its more than
forty years' debauch of power, insolent in the sense of its
own omnipotence. George was resolute to show that the
claim to omnipotence was a sham, and, to do him justice,
he succeeded in his resolve.

At the head of the Whig party in the House of Lords
was the Duke of Newcastle. At its head in the House of
Commons was William Pitt. These two ministers seemed
fixed and irremovable in their supreme authority. While
Newcastle lavished the money of the state in that spacious
system of bribery which welded the party into so formi-
dable a mass, it was the proud privilege of Pitt to illumi-
nate its policy by his splendid eloquence at home and by the
splendor of his enterprises abroad. Both the ministers
were an enormous expense to the country. Newcastle
never counted the cost so long as there was a county mem-
ber to be bought or a placeman to be satisfied. Pitt never
counted the cost so long as he could add another trophy
of victory to the walls of Westminster Abbey and inscribe
another triumph on England's roll of battles. The sordid
skill of Newcastle and the dazzling genius of Pitt seemed
between them to make the Whig party invulnerable and
irresistible. There was no opposition in Upper or Lower
House; there had been for many years no hint of royal
opposition. Everything promised a long continuance of
the undisputed Whig sway when suddenly the secret de-
termination of a young King and the secret instigations
of a Scotch peer dissipated the stately fabric that had
endured so long.

26 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

The fixed purpose of Lord Bute was to get rid of Pitt.
The fixed purpose of Lord Bute created the fixed purpose
of the King, and the hours of Pitt's administration were
numbered. After a season of rare glory, of resplendent
triumph, Pitt found himself face to face with a formida-
ble coalition of interests against him, a coalition of inter-
ests none the less formidable because it was headed by a
man for whose attainments, opinions, and ability Pitt must
have felt, and scarcely concealed, the greatest contempt.
Pitt had not made himself an object of personal affection
to those with whom he was brought into immediate con-
tact. In the time of his supremacy he had carried himself
with a haughty arrogance, with an austere disdain which
had set the smaller men about him raging in secret antag-
onism. The King, driven on by his own dreams of per-
sonal authority, disliked the great minister. Bute, drunk
with the wild ambitions of a weak man, seems to have
believed that in succeeding to Pitt's place he could also
succeed to Pitt's genius. Pitt soon became aware of the
strength of the cabal against him. While some of his col-
leagues were disaffected, others were almost openly treach-
erous. Bute's manner waxed more arrogant in Council.
The King's demeanor grew daily cooler. The great ques-
tion of war or peace was the question that divided the Cabi-
net. On a question of war or peace Bute triumphed and
Pitt fell.

Pitt was all for carrying on the war, which had thus
far proved so successful for the British flag. But Pitt was
not powerfully supported in his belief. If he had his
brothers-in-law James Grenville and Lord Temple on his
side, he had ranged against him a powerful opposition
formed by Henry Fox and George Grenville, by Lord
Hardwicke and the Duke of Bedford. On the side of the
peace party Bute ranged himself, bringing with him all
the enormous weight that his influence with the King gave
him. The case of the peace party was a simple, straight-
forward case. Why, they asked, should we continue to
fight ? Our sweet enemy France is on her knees and ready
to accept our terms. Let us enforce those terms and make

1761. PITT'S PROBITY. 27

a triumphant peace instead of further bleeding our ex-
hausted treasury in the prosecution of a war from which
we have now nothing more to gain. Chance gave the peace
party their opportunity. Pitt had become cognizant of
the treaty between France and Spain known as the " Fam-
ily Compact/' the secret treaty which we have already
fully described, by which the two Bourbon princes agreed
to make common cause against England. Pitt straight-
way proposed that the hostile purposes of Spain should
be anticipated by an immediate declaration of war against
Spain and the immediate despatch of a fleet to Cadiz. Bute
promptly opposed the proposal in the Cabinet, and carried
the majority of the Council with him in his opposition.
Pitt instantly resigned.

A curious thing had happened at the coronation cere-
mony. One of the largest jewels in the royal crown got
loose and fell from its place. This was looked upon at the
time by superstitious people as a sinister omen. These
now saw the fulfilment of their forebodings in the loss to
the state of the services of the great minister. The King
himself had no sense that his regal glory was dimmed in
its lustre by the resignation of Pitt. He was so delighted
at having got rid thus easily of the great obstacle to his
own authority that he could readily consent to lend to the
act of parting a gracious air of regret. Much was done to
lighten Pitf s fall. Very liberal offers were made by the
King, offers which seemed to many to mask a hope, and
more than a hope, of undermining the popularity of the
great leader. Pitt declined several offers that were per-
sonal to himself, but expressed his readiness to accept some
signs of the royal favor on behalf of his wife and his
family. A barony was conferred upon Pitt's wife and a
pension of three thousand a year upon Pitt for three lives.
There was nothing unworthy in Pitt's action. He was
notoriously poor ; he was no less notoriously honest ; it was
perfectly certain that, in an age when a successful poli-
tician was for the most part a peculator, no shilling of
public money had ever stuck to Pitt's fingers. If he was
instantly attacked by libels and pamphlets that were prob-

28 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. cfl. xliii.

ably paid for by Bute, or that at least were inspired by
a desire to please Bute, the attacks did Pitt more good
than harm. They produced a prompt reaction, and only
had the effect of making Pitt more dear to the people than
before. His pictures had an enormous sale, and his par-
tisans on the press poured out caricatures and lampoons
upon Bute and his Scotchmen in greater volume and with
greater violence than ever.

Bute was not content with the overthrow of Pitt. He
wished to stand in isolated splendor, and to accomplish
this Newcastle too must go. The great briber of yesterday
had to give way to the great briber of to-day, and Bute
stood alone before the world, the head of the King's Min-
istry, the favorite of the King, the champion of a policy
that promised peace abroad and purity at home, and that
resulted in a renewal of war under conditions of peculiar
disadvantage and a renewed employment of the basest
forms of political corruption. Bute had gained the power
he longed for, but Bute was soon to learn that power need
not and did not mean popularity. " The new Administra-
tion begins tempestuously," Walpole wrote on June 20,
1762. " My father was not more abused after twenty
years than Lord Bute is after twenty days. Weekly papers
swarm, and, like other swarms of insects, sting." Bute
affected an indifference to this unpopularity which he did
not really feel. It is not flattering to a statesman's pride
to be unable to go abroad without being hissed and pelted
by the mob, and it is hard for a minister to convince him-
self of the admiration of a nation when a strong body-
guard is necessary to secure him from the constant danger
of personal attacks. Bute's character did not refine under
the tests imposed upon it. His objectionable qualities
grew more and more unpopular. The less he was liked
the less he deserved to be liked. Adversity did not magnify
that small soul. In his mean anger he sought for mean
revenge. Every person who owed an appointment to the
former ministry felt the weight of the favorite's wrath.
Dismissal from office was the order of the day, and Whig
after Whig was forced to leave his place or office open for

1T62. BUTE'S FOREIGN POLICY. 29

some Tory who was ready to express an enthusiasm for
the statesmanship of Bute.

Bute's idea of a foreign policy was to reverse the policy
of Pitt. He abandoned Frederick of Prussia to his
enemies by cutting off the subsidy which Pitt had paid
him, on the ground that the time agreed on for the subsidy
was up, and that as England only granted it for her own
purposes, and not to benefit Frederick, she was justified in
discontinuino: it whenever it suited her. Onlv a chance
saved the Great Frederick from what seemed like inevi-
table ruin. The Czarina, Elizabeth of Russia, died, and
was succeeded by Peter the Third. With the change of
sovereign came a change in the purposes of Russia. The
Russian army, which had fought with Austria against
Frederick, now received orders to fight with Frederick
against Austria. The war with Spain that Pitt had pre-
dicted Bute was obliged to wage. The conduct of Spain
made it impossible for him not to declare war, and, aided
by Pitt's preparations, he was able to carry on the war
with considerable success. But the credit for such success
was generally given to Pitt, and when Bute made peace
Avith Spain and France it was generally felt that the terms
were not such as Pitt Avould have exacted after so long and
splendid a succession of victories. There was, indeed, a
good deal to be said for the peace, but at the time those who
tried to say it did not get a very patient hearing. It was
well that the Ions: Continental war was ended. Few of
those engaged in it had gained much by it. Prussia, in-
deed, though it left her wellnigh bankrupt and almost
ruined by the enormous burdens she had sustained, was
better in position. She came out of the struggle without
the loss of a sino^le acre of territorv, and with what Fred-
erick especially coveted, the rank of a first-rate Power in
Europe. If Prussia, which had been so long England's
ally, had gained, England had not lost. Undoubtedly
Pitt's war was popular; no less undoubtedly Bute's peace
was unpopular, and the unpopularity of the policy intensi-
fied the unpopularity of the minister. In the eyes of the
bulk of the English people Lord Bute, as a Scotchman, was

30 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xuii.

a foreigner, as much a foreigner as if he hailed from
France or the Low Countries. Lord Chesterfield was
finely disdainful of the popular opposition to Bute on
account of his nationality. " If the vulgar are ever right,"
he said, " Ihey are right for the wrong reason. What they
selected to attack in Lord Bute was his being a Scotchman,
which was precisely what he could not help." But it was
not Bute's nationality, so much as his flagrant partiality
to his fellow-countrymen, that made him unpopular. His
affection for his own countrymen, however admirable and
even touching in itself, was resented fiercely by the Eng-
lish people, who found themselves threatened by a new
invasion of the Picts and Scots. Across the Border came
a steady stream of Bute's henchmen, men with names that
seemed outlandish and even savage to the Londoner, and
every Scotchman found, or hoped to find, through the in-
fluence of Bute his way to office and emolument. The
growing hatred for Bute extended itself as rapidly as un-
justly to the nation from which Bute came.

The story of Bute's Ministry is a story of astonishing
mistakes. The Tories, who for five-and-f orty years had in-
veighed against the political corruption which, fostered by
Walpole, seemed to have culminated under Newcastle, now
boldly went in for a system of flagrant bribery which sur-
passed anything yet essa3'ed by the most cynical of Whig
ministers. The Paymaster's Office became a regular mart
where parliamentary votes were bought and sold as un-
blushingly as humbler folk bought and sold groceries
across a counter. A Ministry weakened by an unpopular
peace, and only held together by such cynical merchan-
dise, was not likely to withstand a strong storm, and the
storm w^as not long in rising.

To swell the exchequer, the Ministry proposed to raise
revenue by a tax on cider and perry. It was resolved to
levy an imposition of four shillings per hogshead on the
grower of the apple wine and the pear wine. The cider
counties raised a clamor of indignation that found a ready
echo in London. Pitt, Beckford, Lyttelton, Hardwicke,
Temple, all spoke against the proposed measure and

1763. GEORGE GREXTILLE'S CHARACTERISTICS. 31

denounced its injustice. George Grenville defended the
bill.

Grenville was one of those honorable and upright states-
men who do not contrive to make either honor or rectitude
seem lovable qualities. He had first made himself con-
spicuous as one of the Boy Patriots who rallied with Pitt
against Walpole. His abilities ran with swiftness along
few and narrow channels. He was desperately well in-
formed about many things, and desperately in earnest
about anything which he undertook. Blessed or cursed
with a solemnity that never was enlivened by a gleam of
humor, a ray of fancy, or a ilash of eloquence, Grenville
regarded the House of Commons with the cold ferocity
of a tyrannical and pompous schoolmaster. A style of
speech that would have made a discourse upon Greek
poetry seem arid and a dissertation upon Italian painting
colorless — if it were possible to conceive Grenville as wast-
ing time or thought on such trifles — added no grace to the
exposition of a fiscal measure or charm to the formality
of a phalanx of figures. He was gloomy, dogged, domi-
neering, and small-minded. His nearest approach to a
high passion was his worship of economy; his nearest ap-
proach to a splendid virtue was his stubborn independence.
He abandoned Pitt for Bute because he detested Pitt's
prodigal policy, but Bute was the more deceived if he
fancied that he was to find in Grenville the convenient
mask that he had lost in ISTewcastle ; and the King himself
had yet to learn how indifferent the dry, morose pedant
and preacher could be not merely to royal favor, but even
to the expression of royal opinion. It was truly said of
him by the greatest of his contemporaries that he seemed
to have no delight out of the House except in such things
as in some way related to the business that was to be done
within it. The " undissipated and unwearied application "
which he devoted to everything that he undertook was
now employed in exasperating the country. The time
was not yet ripe for it to be employed in dismembering the
empire.

In his support of Uie cider tax Grenville managed to

32 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii

make it and himself ridiculous at the same time. In his
defence he kept asking, over and over again, "Where will
you find another tax? tell me where." Pitt, who was lis-
tening disdainfully to his arguments, followed one of these
persistent interrogations by softly singing to himself, very
audibly, the words which belonged to a popular song,
"Gentle shepherd, tell me where." The House took the
hint with delight, and the title of Gentle Shepherd re-
mained an ironical adornment of Grenville for the rest,
of his life.

Bute's disregard of public opinion was contrasted to his
disadvantage with the conduct of Sir Eobert Walpole, who
bowed to the demonstration against his far wiser system
of excise. Bute forced his tax forward in defiance of the
popular feeling, and then, apparently alarmed by the
strength of the spirit he had himself raised, he answered
the general indignation by a sudden and welcome resigna-
tion on April 8, 1763. This was the end of Bute's attempt
to be the recognized head of a government, though he still
hoped and believed that he could rule from behind the
throne instead of standing conspicuously at its side. To
his unpopularity as a foreigner, to his unpopularity as a
favorite, public hostility added a fresh, if a far-fetched
and fantastic reason for detesting Bute. It was pointed
out that he had Stuart blood in his veins, that an ancestor
of his had been the brother of a Scottish King. Any stick
is good enough to strike an unpopular statesman with, and
there were not wanting people to assert, and perhaps even
to believe, that Bute had entertained insidious schemes for
raising himself to the throne. Bute is said to have de-
clared that he resigned in order to avoid involving the
King in the dangers with which his minister was threat-
ened. If he did feel any fears for the King's safety he
had certainly done his best to make those fears reasonable.
It has not often been given to any statesman to hold the
highest office in the state for so short a time, and in that
time to accomplish so large an amount of harm. And the
immediate harm of that year and a half was little as com-
pared with the harm that was to follow, a fatal legacy,

1763. THE RETIREMENT OF BUTE. 33

from the principles that Bute advocated and the policy
that Bute initiated.

With Bute retired two of his followers, Dashwood and
Fox. Dashwood went to the Upper House as Lord Le De-
spencer; Fox accompanied him as Lord Holland. The
disappearance of Dashwood from the Commons was a mat-
ter of little importance. The disappearance of Fox marked
the conclusion of what had been a remarkable, of what
might have been a great career. From this time Fox
ceased to take any real part in public business, and if his
presence lent no lustre to the Lords, his absence made the
character of the Commons more honorable. Fox, with
all his faults, and they were many and grave, had in him
the gifts of the politician and the capacity of the states-
man. Dashwood was a vulgar fool, who, as Horace Wal-
pole said, with the familiarity and phrase of a fishwife,
introduced the humors of Wapping behind the veil of
the Treasury. But Fox was a very different type of man.
Had he been as keen for his own honor as he was eager
in the acquisition of money, had he been as successful in
building up a record of great deeds as he was successful
in building up an enormous fortune, he might have left
behind him one of the greatest names in the history of his
age. But he carried with him to the Upper House the
rare abilities which he had put to such unworthy uses,
and he lives in memory chiefly as the father of his son.
In having such a son he rendered the world a good service,
which he himself labored with infinite pains to make into
an evil service.

A young, inexperienced, and headstrong King found
himself suddenly the central figure of perhaps as singular
a set of men as ever were gathered together for the purpose
of directing the destinies of a nation. A famous caricature
of the period represents the front of a marionette-show,
through an aperture of which the hand of Bute pulls the
wires that make the political puppets work, while Bute
himself peeps round the corner of the show to observe
their antics. No stranger dolls ever danced around a
royal figure to the manipulation of a favorite's fingers. At

VOL. III. — 2

34 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

a time when political parties as the}^ are now familiar to
us did not exist, when Whiggism was so dominant that
Opposition in the modern sense was unknown, when the
pleasures and the gains of administration were almost
entirely reserved for a privileged caste, and when self-in-
terest was the rarely disavowed spur of all individual
action, it is scarcely surprising to find that the vast ma-
jority of the statesmen of the day were as unadmirable in
their private as they were unheroic in their public life.
For then and long after, the political atmosphere, bad at
its best, was infamous at its worst, and by an unhappy
chance the disposition of the King led him to favor in
their public life the very men whose private life would
have filled him with loathing, and to detest, where it was
impossible to despise, the men who came to the service of
their country with characters that were clean from a pri-
vacy that was honorable. Many, if not most, of the lead-
ing figures of that hour would have been more appropri-
ately situated as the members of a brotherhood of thieves
and the parasites of a brothel than as the holders of high
office and the caretakers of a royal conscience. There were
men upon the highway, rogues with a bit of crape across
their foreheads and a pair of pistols in their holsters,
haunting the Portsmouth Eoad or Hounslow Heath, with
the words " Stand and deliver " ever ready on their lips,
who seem relatively to be men of honor and probity com-
pared with a man like the first Lord Holland or like Eigby.
There were poor slaves of the stews, wretched servants of
the bagnios, whose lives seem sweet and decorous when
compared with those of a Sandwich or a Dash wood or a
Duke of Grafton. Yet these men, whose companionship
might be rejected by Jack Sheppard, and whose example
might be avoided by Pompey Bum, are the men whose
names are ceaselessly prominent in the early story of the
reign, and to whose power and influence much of its ca-
lamities are directly due.

It is not easy to accord a primacy of dishonor to any one
of the many statesm.en whose names degrade the age. Pos-
sibly the laurels of shame, possibly the palms of infamy

1V63. THE DUKE OF GRAFTON. 35

may be proffered to Augustus Henry Fitzroy, third
Buke of Grafton. When George the Third came to the
throne the Duke of Grafton was only twenty-five years old,
and had been three years in the House of Lords, after hav-
ing passed about twice as many months in the House of
Commons. Destined to live for more than half a century
after the accession, and to die while the sovereign had still
many melancholy years to live, the Duke of Grafton en-
jo3^ed a long career, that was unadorned by either public
or private virtue. There is no need to judge Grafton on
the indictment of the satirist who in a later day made the
name of Junius more terrible to the advisers of King
George than ever was the name of Pietro Aretino to the
princes whom he scourged. The coldest chronicle of the
Duke's careers, the baldest narrative of his life, proves him
to have been no less dangerous to the public weal as a
statesman than he was noxious to human societv as an
individual. He had not even the redeeming grace that
the charm of beauty of person lent to some of his com-
panions in public incompetency and private profligacy.
His face and presence were as unattractive as his manners
were stiff and repellent. His grandfather, the first Duke,
was an illegitimate son of Charles the Second by the
Duchess of Cleveland, and the Duke's severest critic de-
clared that he blended the characteristics of the two
Charles Stuarts. Sullen and severe without religion,
and profligate without gayety, he lived like Charles the
Second, without being an amiable companion, and might
die as his father did, without the reputation of a martyr.
Grafton did not die the death of his royal ancestor. He
lived through seventy-six years, of which less than half
were passed in the fierce light of a disgraceful notoriety,
and more than half in a retirement which should be styled
obscure rather than decent. The only conspicuously cred-
itable act of that long career was the patronage he ex-
tended to the poet Bloomfield, a patronage that seems to
have been prompted rather by the fact that the writer was
born near Grafton's country residence than by any intelli-
gent appreciation of literature. His curious want of taste

36 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

and feeling allowed him to parade his mistress, Nanc}^
Parsons, in the presence of the Queen, at the Opera House,
and to marry, when he married the second time, a first
cousin of the man with whom his first wife had eloped,
John, Earl of Upper Ossory. If his example as a father
was not admirable, at least he showed it to a numerous
offspring, for by his two marriages he was the parent of
no fewer than sixteen children.

Perhaps the prize for sheer political ruffianism, for the
frank audacity of the freebooter, unshadowed by the darker
vices of his better-born associates, may be awarded to
Eigby. N"ot that Kigby redeemed by many private virtues
the unblushing effrontery of his public career. It was
given to few men to be as bad as Dashwood, and Rigby was
not one of the few. But his gross and brutal disregard of
all decency in his acts of public plunder — for even pecu-
lation may be done with distinction — was accompanied by
a gross and brutal disregard of all decency in his tastes
and pleasures with his intimate associates. Eichard Eigby
sprang from the trading class. He was the son of a linen-
draper who was sufficiently lucky to make a fortune as
a factor to the South Sea Company, and who was, in con-
sequence, able to afford his son the opportunity of a good
education, and to launch him on the grand tour of Europe
with every aptitude for the costly vices that men in those
daj^s seemed to think it the chief object of travel to cul-
tivate, and with plenty of money in his pocket to gratify
all his inclinations. Eigby did not take much advantage
of his educational opportunities. His Latinity laid him
open to derision in the House of Commons, and there were
times when his spelling would have reflected little credit
upon a seamstress. But he was quite capable of learning
abroad all the evil that the great school of evil was able
to teach a willing student. He returned to England, and
began his life there with three pronounced tastes: for
gambling, for wiue, and for the baser uses of politics. His
ambitions prompted him to adhere to the party of the
Prince of Wales, and his ready purse won him a welcome
among the courtiers of Leicester House. The Prince of

1763. RIGBY AND THE DUKE OF BEDFORD. 3*7

Wales did little to gratify his hopes, and Rigby would have
found it difficult to escape from the straits into which his
debts had carried him if his gift of pleasing had not pro-
cured for him a powerful patron. The Duke of Bedford
had been attracted by the remarkable convivial powers of
Eigby, powers remarkable in an age when to be conspicu-
ous for conviviality demanded very unusual capacity both
of head and of stomach. To be admired by Bedford was
in itself a patent of dishonor, but it was a profitable patent
to Eigby. The Duke, who was accused at times of a shame-
ful parsimony, Avas generous to profusion towards the
bloated buffoon who was able and willing to divert him,
and from that hour Eigby's pockets never wanted their
supply of public money.

There were few redeeming features in Eigby's char-
acter. It was his peculiar privilege to be false to his old
friends and to corrupt his young ones. In an age when
sobriety was scorned or ignored he had the honor to be
famous for his insobriety. A sycophant to those who could
serve him and a bully to those who could not, Eigby added
the meanness of the social parvenu to the malignity of
the political bravo. At a time when men of birth and rank
came to the House of Commons in the negligence of morn-
ing dress, Eigby was conspicuous for the splendor of his
attire, and illuminated the green benches by a costume
whose glow of color only fainth^ attenuated the glowing
color of his face. There were baser and darker spirits ready
for the service of the King; there was no one more un-
lovely.

Eigby's patron was as unadmirable as Eigby himself.
He was fifty years old when George the Third came to the
throne, and he had lived his half a century in the occu-
pation of many offices and through many opportunities for
distinction without distinguishing himself. He had still
eleven years to live without adding anything of honor or
credit to his name, or earning any other reputation than
that of a corrupt politician whose private life was passed
chiefly in the society of gamblers, jockeys, and buffoons.
He had been Governor-General of Ireland, and had gov-

,38 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

erned it as well as Verres had governed Sicily. He had
been publicly horsewhipped by a county attorney on the
racecourse at Lichfield. His career, always unimportant,
was ignominious when it was not incapable, and it was
generally both the one and the other.

All the statesmen of the day were not of the school of
Grafton. There were numerous exceptions to the rule of
Eigby. The Graftons and the Rigbys gain an unnatural
prominence from the fact that then and later it was to
such tools the King turned, and that he always found such
tools ready to his hands. There were many men who, with-
out any show of austerity or any burden of morality, were
at least of a very different order from the creatures whom
the King did not indeed delight to honor, but whom he
condescended to emi)loy. The Earl of Granville, with the
weight of seventy years upon his shoulders, carried into
active political life under his fourth sovereign the same
qualities both for good and evil that adorned or injured
the name of Carteret. He accepted Lord Bute's authority,
and he did not live long enough to witness Bute's fall. He
accorded to the peace brought about by Bute " the appro-
bation of a dying statesman," as the most honorable peace
the country had ever seen. He died in the January of
1763, leaving behind him the memory of a long life which
had always been lived to his own advantage but by no
means to the disadvantage of his country. He left behind
him a memory of rare public eloquence and graceful pri-
vate conversation, of an elegant scholarship that prompted
him to the patronage of scholars, of a profound belief in
his own judgment, and a no less profound contempt for
the opinions of others. His public life was honest in an
epoch when public dishonesty was habitual, and the best
thing to be said of him was the best thing he said of him-
self, that when he governed Ireland he governed so as to
please Dean Swift.

At a time when the King was surrounded by such ad-
visers as we have seen, the King's chief servant and most
loyal subject was a man no longer young, who had nothing
to do with the courts or councils, and who yet was of

1763. DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 39

greater service to the throne and its occupier than all the
House of Lords and half the House of Commons. Long
years before George the Third was born, a struggling, un-
successful schoolmaster gave up a school that was well-nigh
given up by its scholars and came to London to push his
fortune as a man of letters. When George the Third came
to the throne the schoolmaster had not found fortune —
that he never found — but he had found fame, and the
name of Samuel Johnson was known and loved wherever
an English word was spoken or an English book read. The
conditions of political life in England in the eighteenth
centur}^ made it impossible for such a man as Samuel
Johnson ever to be the chosen counsellor, the minister of an
English king. The field of active politics was reserved
for men of family, of wealth, or of the few whom powerful
patronage served in lieu of birth and aided to the necessary
opulence. Johnson was one of the most influential writers
of his day, one of the strongest intellectual forces then at
work, one of the greatest personalities then alive. But it
would no more have occurred to him to dream of adminis-
trative honors and a place in a Ministry than it would have
occurred to George the Third to send one of his equerries
to the dingy lodgings of an author with the request that
Dr. Johnson would step round to St. James's Palace and
favor his Majesty with his opinion on this subject or on
that. It is not certain that the King would have gained
very much if he had done anything so unusual. Dr. John-
son's views were very much the King's views, and we know
that he would have been as obstinate as the King in many
if not most of the cases in which the King's obstinacy was
very fatal to himself.

When Queen Anne was still upon the throne of England,
when James the Second still lived with a son who dreamed
of being James the Third, and when George the First was
only Elector of Hanover, people still attributed to the sov-
ereign certain gifts denied to subjects. They believed, for
instance, that the touch of the royal fingers could cure
the malady of scrofula, then widely known in consequence
of that belief as the King's Evil. In obedience to that be-

40 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

lief, in the spring of 1712 some poor folk of Lichfield
travelled to London with their infant son, in the hope that
Queen Anne would lay her hand upon the child and make
him whole. There were da3^s appointed for the ceremony
of the touch, and on one of those days the Johnsons of
Lichfield carried their little Samuel into the royal pres-
ence, and Queen Anne stroked the child with her hand.
For more than seventy years a dim memory remained with
Johnson of a stately lady in black; for more than seventy
years the malady that her touch was thought to heal haunt-
ed him. When the man who had been the sick child died,
the third prince of a foreign house was seated on the
throne of England, and the third of the line owed, uncon-
scious of the debt, no little of his security on his throne
and no little of his popularity with the mass of his people
to the struggling author who had received the benediction
of the last Stuart sovereign of England.

Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire,
on September 8, 1709. His father was a bookseller, perhaps
too fond of books to be a good dealer in them. But his
crowded shelves were a paradise to his son when at the
age of sixteen he came home from the last of many school-
ings, each of which had taught him much. For two years
he read his way recklessly, riotously, and joyously through
his father's migratory library. He took the advice of the
varlet in "The Taming of the Shrew," and studied what
he most affected. His memory was as vast as his head was
huge and his body bulky. He read what he liked, and he
stored his mind with as miscellaneous a mass of knowl-
edge as ever was heaped up within the pent-house of one
human skull. That youthful zeal and fiery heat of study
remained youthful with him to the end of his many days;
the passion for learning never burned low in that mighty
brain. The man who in his old age studied Dutch to test
the acquiring powers of his intellect, and still found them
freshly tempered, acted in his ebullient boyhood as if, like
Bacon, he had taken all knowledge to be his province. The
man who in his old age found an exquisite entertainment
in reading a Spanish romance of chivalry, in his eager

1728. THE COLLEGE-DAYS OF DR. JOHNSON. 41

boyhood found the Latin poems of Petrarch sweeter than
apples. The great Italian who counted the sonnets to
which he owes his immortality but as the clouds of a dream,
and who built his hopes of fame upon that " Africa "
which the world has been willing to forget, found the
reader he would have welcomed and the student he would
have cherished in the ungainly youth who pored over him
in a garret. The boy Johnson, bent over the great folio,
forgot that he was poor, forgot that he was ill-clad, under
the spell of the stately lines that their poet believed to be
not less than Virgilian. He had set out on an errand even
more trivial than that of Saul the son of Kish, and he
had found the illimitable kingdom of dreams.

Chance sent the student of Petrarch to Pembroke Col-
lege, Oxford, where he passed two years eating the bitter
bread of poverty in the bitter pride of youth. He was
hungry, he was ragged, he was conscious of his great
knowledge and his great gifts, and he saw all around him
men in high places whose attainments he despised, and
men seeking the same goal as himself whose happy ease
of circumstances he affected to disdain and was compelled
to envy. His wild soul rose in rebellion at the inequalities
of life. He passed for a mutineer.

His college days were bitter and rebellious; days of
hunger and thirst and ruined raiment. Some well-mean-
ing person, moved to pity by the sight of Johnson's shabby
shoes, patched and mended till they were past all whole-
some cobbling, placed a new sound pair at Johnson's door
in nameless benevolence. Johnson cast them from him
with fury, too proud to be shod by another man's bounty.
He drifted through his few and gloomy college days derid-
ing and despising those in authority ; seemingly wasting his
time and yet not wasting it ; translating Pope's " Mes-
siah " into such noble Latin that Pope, moved by honest
admiration, declared that future times would be unable
to tell which was the original and which was the transla-
tion. Johnson could be nowhere without learning, and he
learned something at Oxford ; but in any case his stay was
short, and he drifted back to Lichfield, leaving on the

42 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

banks of the Isis an amazing memory of a sullen savage
creature, brimmed with the strangest miscellaneous learn-
ing. In Lichfield his father's death, following hard upon
his return from Oxford, left him lonelier and poorer than
ever, troubled by the grim necessity to be fed, clothed, and
sheltered, and by the uncertainty how to set about it. He
did set about it, earnestly, strenuouslv, if not very fruit-
fully. " *

He was ready to do anything, to turn to anything, to
write, to translate, to teach. He fell in love with an
amazing woman more than twenty years his senior, mon-
strously fat, monstrously painted, monstrously affected and
absurd; he fell in love with her, and he married her. She
had a little money, and Johnson set up an academy for
the instruction of youth. But youth would not come to
be instructed. One youth came, one of the very few, a
soldier's son and a grandson of a Huguenot refugee, named
David Garrick. The master and the pupil became friends,
and the friendship lasted with life. Master and pupil re-
solved to make the adventure of the town together. The
eyes of aspiring provincials turned always to the great
city, every ambitious provincial heart beat with desire for
the conquest of London. The priest of letters and the
player of parts, the real man and the shadow of all men,
packed up bag and baggage and came to London to very
different fame and very different fortune. The great city
had one kind of welcome to give to the man who desired
to speak truth and another to the man who proposed to
give pleasure. The chances for men of letters and for
players were very unlike just then. The two strands of life
ran across the web of London, the strand of Johnson iron-
gray, the strand of Garrick gleaming gold. Through long
years Johnson hid in dingy courts and alleys, ill-clothed,
ill-fed, an uncouth Apollo in the service of Admetus Cave
and his kind, while the marvellous actor was climbing
daily higher and higher on the ladder of an actor's fame,
the friend of the wealthy, the favored of the great, the
admired, the applauded, the well-beloved. Garrick de-
served his fame and his fortune, his splendid successes and

1737. JOHNSON AND HIS WORK. 43

his shining rewards; but the grand, rough writer of books
did not deserve his buffets and mishaps, his ferocious
hungers, his acquaintanceship with sponging-houses, and
all the catalogue of his London agonies. His struggle
for life was a Titan's struggle, and it was never either
selfish or ignoble. He wanted to live and be heard because
he knew that he had something to say that was worth
hearing. He needed to live for the sake of his ardent
squalid affections, for the sake of the people who were
always dependent upon his meagre bounty, for the sake of
the wife he loved so deeply, mourned so truly when she
died, and remembered with such tender loyalty so long as
life was left to him. Miserably poor himself, he always
had about him people more miserable and more poor, who
looked to him for the very bread and water of their afflic-
tion, dependents whom he tended not merely generously,
but, what was better still, cheerfully. Under conditions
of existence that would have seemed crushing to men of
letters with a tithe of Johnson's greatness of soul, John-
son fought his way inch by inch in the terrible career of
the man who lived by his pen, and by his pen alone. He
wrote anything and everything so long as it was honorable
to write and promised to make the world better. But it was
not what Johnson wrote so much as what Johnson did
that commanded his age and commands posterity. In the
truest sense of the word, he lived beautifull)^ " Easselas "
and " The Idler," " London " and " The Vanity of Human
Wishes," " The Eambler " and the " Sessions of Lilliput,"
and the '' Lives of the Poets," and even the famous " Dic-
tionary," only claim remembrance because they were done
by a man who would be as interesting a study and as en-
nobling an example if he had never written a line of the
works that bear his signature in every sentence of their
solemn, even their portentous majesty. Johnson had the
kindest heart wrapped in a rugged hide. One of the
noblest of the many noble stories about him relates how he
and a friend, whose name of Burke was not then famous,
found a poor woman of the streets houseless, hungry, and
exhausted in the streets. Burke had a room which he could

44 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliii.

offer the poor creature for a night's shelter; but Burke
could not get the woman there. Johnson had no room —
his dependents swarmed over every available space at his
command — but he had the strength of a giant, and he
used it as a giant should, in carrying the poor wretch in
his arms to the roof that Burke could offer her. Long
years later, another man of letters, hungry, homeless, and
friendless, sick almost unto death, found a kind friend
and gentle nurse in a woman of the streets. In succoring
De Quincey we may well think that Anne was repaying
something of the debt owed by one of her unhappy class to
two of the 2:lories of literature and of humanitv.

Slowly and surely Johnson's fame spread. The " Dic-
tionary," massive fruit of many vigils, reward of many
supplications, made him illustrious. It might have been
dedicated to Chesterfield, if Chesterfield had shown to the
struggling author the courtesy he was eager to extend to
the established writer. Chesterfield need not be blamed
if he was reluctant to welcome a queer ungainly creature
whose manners were appalling, and of whose genius no one
save himself was assured. But he was to be blamed, and
he deserved the stern punishment he received in Johnson's
stiuging letter of repudiation, for attempting, when John-
son was distinguished and beyond his power to help, to win
the great honor of a dedication by a proffer of friendship
that came too late. Johnson needed no Chesterfield now.
London had learned to reverence him, had learned to love
him. His friends were the best Englishmen alive ; the club
which Johnson established bore on its roll the most illus-
trious names in the country; at the home of the Thrales
Johnson tasted and appreciated all that was best in the
home life of the time. He had a devoted friend in the
person of a fussy, fantastic, opinionated, conceited little
Scotch gentleman, Mr. James Boswell of Auchinleck, who
clung to his side, treasured his utterances, cherished his
sayings, and made himself immortal in immortalizing his
hero. It is good to remember that when George the Third
came to the throne a man like Johnson was alive. It is
not so good to remember how seldom he found himself

1763. JOHNSON'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE. 45

face to face with the King, whom he might have aided
with his wisdom, his counsel, and his friendship.

Johnson's presence adorned and honored f our-and-twenty
years of a reign that was to last for sixty years. He was
the friend or the enemy of every man worthy to arouse
any strong emotion of love or scorn in a strong spirit. He
had the admiration of all whose admiration was worth the
having. The central figure of the literary London of his
lifetime, he exercised something of the same social and
intellectual influence over all Londoners that Socrates
exercised over all Athenians. The affection he inspired
survived him, and widens with the generations. In the
hundred years and more that have passed since Johnson's
death, his memory has grown greener. The symbol of his
life and of its lesson is to be found in what Hawthorne
beautifully calls the sad and lovely legend of the man
Johnson's public penance in the rain, amid the jeering
crowd, to expiate the offence of the cliild against its father.
Johnson was the very human apostle of a divine righteous-
ness.

46 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliv.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE " NORTH BRITON/'

One of the most beautiful places on one of the most
beautiful rivers in the world is Medmenham on the
Thames, hard by Marlow. In the awakening of spring,
in the tranquillity of summer, or the rich decline of
August, the changing charm of the spot appeals with the
special insistence that association lends to nature. ]\Ied-
menham is a haunted place. Those green fields and
smiling gardens have been the scenes of the strangest
id3ds; those shining waters have mirrored the fairest of
frail faces; those woods have echoed to the names of the
light nymphs of town and the laughter of modish satyrs.
It was once very lonely in its loveliness, a ground remote,
where men could do and did do as they pleased unheeded
and unobserved. Where now from April to October a
thousand pleasure-boats pass by, where a thousand pleas-
ure-seekers land and linger, a century and a half ago the
spirit of solitude brooded, and those who came there came to
a calm as unvexed and as enchanting as the calm of Aval-
Ion. They made strange uses of their exquisite opportunity.
They profaned the groves whose very winds breathed
peace; they polluted the stream that a poet would have
found sacred. The remains are there of a Cistercian abbe3^
the ruins of a ruin, twice fallen into disuse and decav.
It was a ruin in the eighteenth century when a member of
Parliament, who was also a baronet and a Chancellor of the
Exchequer, took it into his evil head to repair it. Under
the care of Sir Francis Dashwood it was restored for a
new and altered life. The abbey rose again, and once
asrain was associated with a brotherhood of monks. But
where the quiet Cistercians had lived and prayed a new

1763. JOHN WILKES. 47

brotherhood of St. Francis, named after their founder,
devoted themselves to all manner of blasphemy, to all
manner of offence. In a spot whose beauty might well
be expected to have only a softening influence, whose
memories might at least be found exalting, a handful of
disreputable men gathered together to degrade the place,
and, as far as that was possible, themselves, with the
beastly pleasures and beastly humors of the ingrained
blackguard.

The Hell-Fire Club was dead and gone, but the spirit
of the Hell-Fire Club was alive and active. The monks
of St. Francis were worthy pupils of the principles of the
Duke of Wharton. They sought to make their profligacy,
in which they strove to be unrivalled, piquant by a parody
of the religious ceremonies of the Christian faith. The
energy and the earnestness which other men devote to the
advancement of some public cause, to the furtherance of
their country^s welfare, or even to the gratification of their
own ambitions, these men devoted to a passion for being
pre-eminent in sin, conspicuous in infamy. If they suc-
ceeded in nothing else, they succeeded in making their
names notorious and shameful, they succeeded in stirring
the envy of men no better than they, but less enabled by
wealth or position to gratify their passions. They suc-
ceeded in arousing the loathing not merely of honest men.
but even of the knaves and fools whose rascality was not
so rotten and whose folly was not so foul as that of the
noblemen and statesmen who rioted within the walls of
Medmenham.

It is curious and melancholy to record that the leading
spirits of this abominable brotherhood were legislators in
both Houses of Parliament, men of old family, great posi-
tion, large means, men holding high public office, members
of the Government. Their follies and their sins would
scarcely be worth remembering to-day were it not for the
chance that gave them for companion and ally one of the
most remarkable men of his age, a man whose abilities
were in striking contrast to those of his associates, a man
who might almost be called a man of genius.

48 A HISTOKY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliv.

John Wilkes was the son of a rich distiller and of a
Presbyterian mother. He had received a good education
in England and at Leyden, where so many of the English-
men of that day went as students. He had travelled much
in his youth upon the Continent. On his return he was
induced by his father, he being then only two-and-twenty,
to marry a lady who was exceedingly rich, but who had
the misfortune to be at least ten years older than her hus-
band. It is scarcely surprising to find that the marriage
did not turn out happily. Wilkes was young, fresh from
the bright Continental life, delighting in pleasure and the
society of those who pursued pleasure. How far a happier
marriage might have influenced him for good it were idle
to consider. His marriage he regarded always and spoke
of always as a sacrifice to Plutus, not to Venus, and he
certainly was at no pains to make it any more of a sacrifice
than he could help. His wild tastes, his wild companions
soon sickened and horrified Mrs. Wilkes. The ill-matched
pair separated, and remained separate for the rest of their
lives.

Wilkes was delighted to be free. He was at liberty to
squander his money unquestioned and unchallenged in
the society of as pretty a gang of scoundrels as even the
age could produce. No meaner, more malignant, or more
repulsive figure darkens the record of the last century
than that of Lord Sandwich. Sir Francis Dashwood ran
him close in infamy. Mr. Thomas Potter was the peer
of either in beastliness. All three were members of Par-
liament; all three were partially responsible for the legis-
lation of the country; two were especially so responsible.
All three were bound at least to a decorous acknowledgmcDt
of the observances of the Church; one was in especial so
bound. Sir Francis Dashwood and Lord Sandwich were,
then or thereafter, members of the Government. Sir
Francis Dashwood was remarkable as having been the
worst and stupidest Chancellor of the Exchequer known
to history. Lord Sandwich was made First Lord of the
Admiraltv. As for the third in this triumvirate of black-
guards^ Mr. Thomas Potter was a son of the Archbishop

1768. WILKES'S PROFLIGACY. 49

of Canterbury, and he was soon afterwards made Vice-
Treasurer for Ireland. Into such honorable hands were
the duties of government delivered less than a century
and a half ago.

In this society Wilkes was made very welcome. He
brought to their filthy fooleries something resembling wit ;
he brought an intelligence as far above that of his com-
panions as that of the monkey is above that of the rabbit.
While he had money he spent it as royally as the rest. If
he rivalled them in their profligacy, he outstripped them
by his intellect. They were conspicuous only by their
vices; he would have been a remarkable man even if it
had pleased Providence to make him virtuous. It had
not pleased Providence to make him attractive to look
upon. There were few uglier men of his day ; few who lost
less by their ugliness. But though we are well assured
that his appearance was repulsive, he redeemed his hideous-
ness by his ready tongue and witty mind. He said of him-
self, truly enough, that he only wanted half an hour's
start to make him even with the handsomest man in Eng-
land.

Wilkes flung his money and his wife's money about reck-
lessly, while he played his part as a country gentleman
upon the estate at Aylesbury which his unhappy wife had
resigned to him when they separated. Of this money some
eight thousand pounds went in an unsuccessful attempt
to bribe his way into the representation of Berwick, and
seven thousand more went in the successful attempt to buy
himself the representation of Aylesbury. It is probable
that he hoped to advance his failing fortunes in Parlia-
ment. His fortunes were failing, failing fast. He made
an ignoble attempt to bully his wife out of the miserable
income of two hundred a year which was all that she had
paved out of her wealth, but the attempt was happily de-
feated by that Court of King's Bench against which Wilkes
was to be pitted later in more honorable hostility.

It was perhaps impossible that Wilkes could long re-
main content with the companionship of men like Dash-
wood^ and Sandwich; it was certainly impossible that men

50 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliv.

like Dashwood and like Sandwich could for long feel
comfortable in the companionship of a man so infinitely
their superior in wit, intelligence, and taste. The pane-
gyrists of Sandwich — for even Sandwich had his pane-
gyrists in an age when wealth and rank commanded com-
pliment— found the courage to applaud Sandwich as a
scholar and an antiquarian, on the strength of an account
of some travels in the Mediterranean, which the world
has long since willingly let die. But the few weeks or
months of foreign travel that permitted Sandwich to pose
as a connoisseur when he was not practising as a profli-
gate could not inspire him with the humor or the appre-
ciation of Wilkes, and a friendship only cemented by a
common taste for common vices soon fell asunder. There
is a story to the effect that the quarrel began with a practi-
cal Joke which Wilkes played off on Sandwich at Medmen-
ham. Sandwich, in some drunken orgy, was induced to
invoke the devil, whereupon Wilkes let loose a monkey,
that had been kept concealed in a box, and drove Sand-
wich into a paroxysm of fear in the belief that his impious
supplication had been answered. For whatever reason,
Wilkes and Sandwich ceased to be friends, to Wilkes's cost
at first, and to Sandwich's after. Sandwich owes his un-
enviable place in history to his association with Wilkes in
the first place, and in the next to his alliance with the
beautiful, unhappy Miss Ray, who was murdered by her
melancholy lover, the Eev. Mr, Hickman, at the door of
Covent Garden Theatre. The fate of his mistress and his
treason to his friend have preserved the name of Sandwich
from the forgetfulness it deserved.

In those days Wilkes made no very remarkable figure in
Parliament. It was outside the walls of Westminster that
he first made a reputation as a public man. In the un-
popularity of Bute, Wilkes found opportunity for his own
popularity. The royal peace policy was very unwelcome,
and agitated the feeling of the country profoundly. Po-
litical controversy ran as high in the humblest cross-
channels as in the main stream of courtly and political
life. At that time, we are told by a contemporary letter-

1763. WILKES AS A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. 51

writer, the mason would pause in his task to discuss the
progress of the peace, and the carpenter would neglect his
work to talk of the Princess Dowager, of Lord Treasurers
and Secretaries of State. To win support and sympathy
from such keen observers, the Ministry turned again for
aid to the public press that had been so long neglected ])y
the Whigs. Smollett, the remembered novelist. Murphy,
the forgotten dramatist, were commissioned to champion
the cause of the Government in the two papers, the Briton
and the Auditor.

The Government already had a severe journalistic critic
in the Monitor, a newspaper edited by John Entinck,
which had been started in 1755. The Monitor was not at
all like a modern newspaper. It was really little more
than a weekly pamphlet, a folio of six pages published
every Saturda}^, and containing an essay upon the politi-
cal situation of the hour. Its hostility to Bute goaded
the minister into the production of the Briton, which was
afterwards supplemented by the creation of the Auditor
when it was found that Smollett had called up against
the Ministry a more terrible antagonist than the Monitor.
For the Briton only lives in the memories of men because
it called into existence the North Briton.

Wilkes had entered Parliament as the impassioned fol-
lower of Pitt. He made manv confessions of his desire
to serve his country, professions which may be taken as
sincere enough. But he was also anxious to serve himself
and to mend his fortunes, and he did not find in Parlia-
mentary life the advancement for which he hoped. Twice
he sought for high position under the Crown, and twice
he was unsuccessful. He wished to be made ambassador
to Constantinople, where he would have found much that
was congenial to him, and his wish was not granted. He
wished to be made Governor-General of the newly con-
quered Quebec, and again his desires were unheeded.
Wilkes believed that Bute was the cause of his double dis-
appointment. He became convinced that while the favors
of the State lay in Bute's hands they would only be given
to Tories, and more especially to Tories who were also

52 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlit.

Scotchmen. If Bute could have known, it would have
been a happy hour for him which had seen Wilkes start-
ing for the Golden Horn or sailing for the St. Lawrence.
But Bute was a foolish man, and he did his most foolish
deed when he made Wilkes his enemy.

The appearance of the North Briton was an event in
the history of journalism as well as in the political history
of the country. It met the heavy-handed violence of the
Briton with a frank ferocity which was overpowering. It
professed to fight on the same side as the Monitor, but it
surpassed Entinck's paper as much in virulence as in
ability. Under the whimsical pretence of being a North
Briton, Wilkes assailed the Scotch party in the State with
unflagging satire and unswerving severity. In the satire
and the severity he had an able henchman in Charles
Churchill.

Those who are inclined to condemn Wilkes because for a
season he found entertainment in the society of a Sand-
wich, a Dashwood, and a Potter, must temper their judg-
ment by remembering the affection that Wilkes was able
to inspire in the heart of Churchill. While the scoun-
drels of Medmenham were ready to betray their old asso-
ciate, and, with no touch of the honor proverbially at-
tributed to thieves, to drive him into disgrace, to exile, and
if possible to death, the loyal friendship of the poet was
given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a
man of irreproachable character, of unimpeachable moral-
ity, or of unswerving austerity. But he was as different
from the Sandwiches and the Dashwoods as dawn is dif-
ferent from dusk, and in enumerating all of the many
arguments that are to be accumulated in defence of Wilkes,
not the least weighty arguments are that while on the one
hand he earned the hatred of Sandwich and of Dashwood,
on the other hand he earned the love of Charles Churchill.

Churchill's name and fame have suffered of late years.
Since Byron stood by the neglected grave and mused on
him who blazed, the comet of a season, the genius of
Churchill has been more and more disregarded. But the
Georgian epoch, so rich in its many and contrasting types

1731-64. THE POET CHURCHILL. 53

of men of letters, produced few men more remarkable in
themselves, if not in their works, than Charles Churchill.
The cleric who first became famous for most unclerical
assaults upon the stage, the satirist who could be the most
devoted friend, the seducer who could be so loyal to his
victim, the spendthrift who could be generous, the cynic
who could feel and obey the principles of the purest
patriotism, was one of those strangely compounded natures
in which each vice was as it were effaced or neutralized
by some compensating virtue. It may be fairly urged
that while Churchill's virtues were his own, his vices were
in large part the fault of his unhappy destiny. The West-
minster boy who learned Latin under Vincent Bourne,
and who was a schoolfellow of Warren Hastings, of Cow-
per, and of Colman, might possibly have made a good
scholar, but was certainly not of the stuff of which good
clergymen are made. An early marriage, an unhappy mar-
riage contracted in the Eules of the Fleet, had weighed
down his life with encumbrances almost before he had
begun to live. Compelled to support an unsuitable wife
and an increasing family, Churchill followed his father's
example and his father's injudicious counsel and took Holy
Orders. Men took Orders in those days with a light heart.
It afforded the needy a livelihood, precarious indeed for
the most part, but still preferable to famine. Men took
Orders with no thought of the sanctity of their calling,
of the solemn service it exacted, of its awful duties and
its inexorable demands. They wished merely to keep
famine from the door, to have food and fire and shelter,
and they took Orders as under other conditions they would
have taken the King's shilling, with no more feeling of
reverence for the black cassock than for the scarlet coat.
Churchill was not the man to wear the clergyman's gown
with dignity, or to find in the gravity of his office consola-
tion for the penury that it entailed. The Establishment
offered meagre advantages to an extravagant man with an
extravagant wife. He drifted deeper and deeper into
debt. He became as a wandering star, reserved for the
blackness of bailiffs and the darkness of duns. But the

54 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliv.

rare quality he had in him of giving a true friendship to
his friend won a like quality from other men. Dr. Lloyd,
under-master of his old school of Westminster, came to
his aid, helj^ed him in his need, and secured the patience
of his creditors. He was no longer harassed, but he was
still poor, and the spur of poverty drove him to tempt
his fortune in letters. Like so many a literary adventurer
of the eighteenth century, he saw in the writing of verse
the sure way to success. Like so many a literary adventurer
of the century, he carried his first efforts unsuccessfully
from bookseller to bookseller. The impulses of his wit
were satirical; he was not dismayed by failure; the stage
had entertained him and irritated him, and he made the
stage the subject of his first triumph. " The Rosciad "
was in every sense a triumph. Its stings galled the vanity
of the players to frenzy. At all times a susceptible brother-
hood, their susceptibilities were sharply stirred by
Churchill's corrosive lines and acidulated epigrams. Their
indignation finding vent in hot recrimination and virulent
lampoon only served to make the poem and its author
better known to the public. Churchill replied to the worst
of his assailants in " The Apology," which rivalled the
success of " The Eosciad," and gained for the satirist the
friendship of Garrick, who had affected to disdain the
praises of " The Rosciad,'' but who now recognized in
time the power of the satirist and the value of his approval.
Churchill himself was delighted with his good fortune.
He was the talk of the town; he had plenty of money in
his pocket; he was separated from his wife, freed from
his uncongenial profession, and he could exchange the
solemn black of the cleric for a blue coat with brass but-
tons and a gold-laced hat.

Lest the actors whom he had lashed should resort to
violence for revenge, he carried with ostentation a sturdy
cudgel. It was a formidable weapon in hands like
Churchill's, and Churchill was not molested. For Churchill
was a man of great physical strength. He tells the world
in the portrait he painted of himself of the vastness of
his bones, of the strength of his muscles, of his arms like

1762. NEWSPAPER POLEMICS. 55

two twin oaks^ of his legs fashioned as if to bear the weight
of the Mansion House, of his massive body surmounted
by the massive face, broader than it was long. The ugly
face was chieflv remarkable, accordins: to the confession
of its owner, for its expression of contentment, though
the observant might discern " sense lowering in the pent-
house of his eye.'' l^ike most giants, he overtaxed his
strength, both mentally and physically. Whatever he did
he did with all his mighty energy. He loved, hated, work-
ed, played, at white heat as it were, and withered up his
forces with the flame they fed. In nothing did his zeal
consume itself more hotly than in his devotion to Wilkes.

Churchill met Wilkes in 1762, and seems to have fallen
instantly under the spell which Wilkes found it so easy to
exercise upon all who came into close contact with him.
Undoubtedly Churchill's friendship was very valuable to
Wilkes. If Churchill loved best to express his satire in
verse, he could write strongly and fiercely in prose, and
the North Briton owed to his pen some of its most brilliant
and some of its bitterest pages. In the North Briton
Wilkes and Churchill laid about them lustily, striking at
whatever heads they pleased, holding their hands for no
fame, no dignity, no influence. It was wholly without fear
and wholly without favor. If it assailed Bute again and
again with an unflagging zeal, it was no less ready to
challenge to an issue the greatest man who ever accepted
a service from Bute, and to remind Dr. Johnson, who had
received a pension from the King's favorite, of his own
definition of a pension and of a pensioner.

Before the fury and the popularity of the North Briton
both the Auditor and the Briton had to strike their colors.
The Auditor came to its inglorious end on February 8,

1763. The Briton died on the 12th of the same month,
leaving the North Briton master of the field. Week after
week the North Briton grew more severe in its strictures
upon the Government, strictures that scorned the veil of
hint and innuendo that had hitherto prevailed in these
pamphleteering wars. Even the Monitor had always al-
luded to the statesmen whom it assailed by initial letters.

56 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xliv.

The North Briton called them by their names in all the
plainness of full print, the name of the sovereign not
being excepted from this courageous rule. But the fame
of the North Briton only came to its full with the number
forty-five.

1763. WILKES'S CRITICISM OF THE KING'S SPEECH. 57

CHAPTER XLV.

NUMBER FORTY-FIVE.

When Bute disappeared from the public leadership of
his party, Wilkes, from professedly patriotic motives, de-
layed the publication of the current number of the North
Briton, to see if the policy which Bute had inspired still
guided the actions of the gentle shepherd, George Gren-
ville. Wilkes wished to know if the influence of the
Scottish minister was at an end, or if he still governed
through those wretched tools Vv^ho had supported the most
odious of his measures, the ignominious peace, and the
wicked extension of the arbitrary mode of excise. He de-
clared himself that if Bute only intended to retire into
that situation which he held before he took the seals, a
situation in which he dictated to every part of the King's
administration, Wilkes was as ready to combat the new
Administration as he had been steady in his opposition to
a single, insolent, incapable, despotic minister.

Any hope that Wilkes may have entertained of a refor-
mation of the Ministry was dispelled by a talk which he
had with Temple and Pitt at Temple's house, where
Temple showed him an early copy of the King's speech.
Wilkes, Pitt, and Temple were entirely in agreement as
to the fatal defects of the speech, and Wilkes went prompt-
ly home and wrote the article which made the forty-fifth
number of the North Briton famous.

In itself the number forty-five was no stronger in its
utterances than many of the preceding numbers. If its
tone be compared with the tone of journalistic criticism of
ministers or their sovereign less than a generation later,
it seems sober and even mild. Wilkes's article started with
a citation from Cicero : " Genus orationis atrox et vehe-

58 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.xlv.

mens, cui opponitur genus illud alterum lenitatis et man-
suetudinis." Then came Wilkes's comment on the speech.
He was careful not to criticize directly the King. With a
prudence that was perhaps more ironical than any direct
stroke at the sovereign, he attacked the minister who
misled and misrepresented the monarch. " The King's
speech has always been considered by the legislature and
by the public at large as the speech of the minister."

Starting from this understanding, Wilkes went on to
stigmatize the Address as " the most abandoned instance of
ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed upon
mankind,'^ and he doubted whether " the imposition is
greater upon the sovereign or on the nation." " Every
friend of his country," the writer declared, " must lament
that a ]Drince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom
England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction
of his sacred name to the most odious measures and to the
most unjustifiable public declarations from a throne ever
renowned for truth, honor, and unsullied virtue."

The article was not intemperate and it certainly was not
unjust. But when it appeared the King was still new
flushed with his idea of his own personal authority in the
State, and the slightest censure of his policy goaded him
into a kind of frenzy. Had Wilkes endeavored with his
own hand to kill the King in his palace of St. James's he
could hardly have made the monarch more furious. He
had long hated and his ministers had long dreaded the
outspoken journalist. King and ministers now felt that
the time had arrived when they could strike, and strike
effectively. The King commanded the law officers of the
Crown to read the article and give their opinion upon it.
The law officers did the work that they knew the King ex-
pected from them. They found that the paper was an in-
famous and seditious libel tending to incite the people to
insurrection. They declared that the offence was one pun-
ishable in due course of law as a misdemeanor. Upon this
hint the ministers acted, rapidly and rashly. A general
warrant was issued for the apprehension of the authors,
printers, and publishers of the North Briton. The printer

1763. ARREST OF WILKES. 59

and the publisher were arrested and brought before Lord
Halifax and Lord Egremont, to whom they gave up the
names of John Wilkes and Charles Churchill as the authors
of the North Briton. The next step was to arrest Wilkes
himself.

The King's messengers came upon Wilkes in his house
in Great George Street, Westminster. It is honorably
characteristic of the man that in the moment of his own
danger he felt more concern for the danger of another.
While he was arguing with the officials that they had no
power to arrest him, as he was a member of Parliament
and therefore privileged against arrest, Churchill came
into the room on a visit to Wilkes. Churchill, Wilkes
knew, was as certain to be arrested as he was. Churchill
could plead no privilege. It was probable that the mes-
sengers were unfamiliar with Churchill's face. Wilkes,
with happy good-nature and happy audacity, immediately
hailed Churchill as Mr. Thompson, clasped his hand and
inquired affectionately how Mrs. Thompson did and if she
was going to dine in the country. If Wilkes was clever
in his suggestion Churchill was no less clever in taking the
hint. He thanked Wilkes, declared that Mrs. Thompson
was at that moment waiting for him, and that he had
merely called in to inquire after the health of Wilkes.
Saying which, Churchill swiftly bowed himself out, hur-
ried home, secured all his papers, and disappeared into
the country. The King's messengers, who were promptly
at his lodgings, were never able to discover his whereabouts.

The flight to which Wilkes so ingeniously assisted him
is not the brightest part of Churchill's career. He carried
with him into his retreat a young girl, a ^liss Carr, the
daughter of a Westminster stonecutter, whom the charms
of Churchill's manners had induced to leave her father's
house. He could not marry the girl, as he was married
already, and, to do him justice, he appears soon to have re-
pented the wrong he had done her. But after an unsuc-
cessful attempt on the girl's part to live again with her
o\^ai people she returned to her lover, and she lived with her
lover to the end. Churchill seems to have been sincerely

60 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlv.

attached to her. If he had been a free man, if his life had
not been blighted by his early unhappy marriage, their
union might have been a very happy one. At his death he
left annuities to both women, to the woman he had mar-
ried and the woman he had loved, the wife's annuity being
the larger of the two.

While Churchill was making his way as quickly as pos-
sible out of a town that his services to his friend had
rendered too hot to hold him, Wilkes was immediately
hurried before Lord Halifax and Lord Egremont at White-
hall. He carried himself very composedly in the presence
of his enemies. He persistently asserted his privilege, as
a member of Parliament, against arrest. He refused to
answer any questions or to acknowledge the authorship of
No. 45 of the North Briton. He professed with equal en-
thusiasm his loyalty to the King and his loathing of the
King's advisers, and he announced his intention of bring-
ing the matter before Parliament the moment that the
session began. Egremont and Halifax retaliated by send-
ing Wilkes to the Tower and causing his house to be
searched and all his papers to be seized. The high-handed
folly of the King's friends had for their chief effect the
conversion of men who had little sympathy for Wilkes
into, if not his advocates, at least his allies against the
illegal methods which were employed to crush him.

Wilkes, through his friends, immediately applied to
the Court of Common Pleas for a writ of habeas corpus.
This was at once obtained, and was served upon the mes-
sengers of the Secretary of State. But Wilkes was no
longer in their custody, and Wilkes was detained in the
Tower for a whole week, part of the time, as he declared,
in solitary confinement, before he was brought into court.
Judge Pratt immediately ordered his discharge on the
ground of his claim to immunity from arrest as a member
of Parliament, without prejudice to any later action
against him.

It was while Wilkes was before Pratt at Westminster
that, if we may accept the authority of Churchill, one of
Wilkes's keenest enemies seized an opportunity for a cruel

1763. HOGARTH'S CARICATURE OF WILKES. 61

revenge. Hogarth hated both Wilkes and Churchill. He
had begun the quarrel by attacking the North Briton and
the Monitor in his cartoon " The Times/' executed for
the greater glorification of the painter's patron, Lord Bute.
The North Briton replied to this attack with a vigor which
infuriated Hogarth, who had his full share of the irritable
vanity which the world always attributes to the artist.
In Wilkes's difficulty Hogarth saw his opportunity. Lurk-
ing behind a screen in the Court of Common Pleas, the
painter sought and found an opportunity for making a
sketch of Wilkes. While Justice Pratt, with what Wilkes
called " the eloquence and courage of old Pome," was lay-
ing down the law upon the prisoner's plea preparatory to
setting him at liberty, Hogarth's busy jDencil was engaged
upon the first sketch for that caricature which has helped
to make Wilkes's features famous and infamous through-
out the world. The print was promptly published at a
shilling, and com.manded an enormous sale. Nearly four
thousand copies, it is said, were sold within a few weeks.
The envenomed skill of Hogarth has made the appearance
of Wilkes almost as familiar to us as to the men of his own
time. The sneering, satyr face, the sinister squint, the
thrust-out chin and protruding lower jaw belong to a
face severely visited by Nature, even when liberal allow-
ance is made for the animosity that prompted the hand
of the caricaturist. The caricature was a savage stroke;
to Wilkes's friends it seemed to be a traitor's stroke.
Wilkes appears to have taken it, as he took most things,
with composure. ^' I know," he wrote later, " but one
short apology to be made for the person of Mr. Wilkes;
it is that he did not make himself, and that he never was
solicitous about the case of his soul (as Shakespeare calls
it) only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never
once heard that he hung over the glassy stream, like
another Narcissus, admiring the image in it, nor that he
ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side
mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain
while it is capable of giving so much pleasure to others.
I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cot-

C2 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlt.

tage to wliich he is a tenant for life, because he has learned
to keep it in pretty good order; while the share of health
and animal spirits which Heaven has given him shall hold
ont, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish
about the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habita-
tion, or will ever be brought to own ' Ingenium Galbae
male habitat :' ' Monsieur est mal loge.' " Good-humored
at the time, his good-humor persevered, and in later life
he was wont to say jestingly that he found he was growing
more and more like his famous portrait every day. But
if it was becoming of Wilkes to bear the attack in so serene
and even so jocular a spirit, it was not unbecoming, as it
was not ungenerous, of his friends to fail to imitate the
coolness of their leader. It is not quite easy to understand
why, in an age of caricature, an age when all men of any
notoriety were caricatured, the friends of Wilkes were so
sensitive to the satire of Hogarth. Public men, and the
friends of public men, have grown less sensitive. However,
Wilkes's friends were, and showed themselves to be, as
angry as Wilkes was, or showed himself to be, indifferent,
and the hottest and angriest of them all was Churchill.
Churchill could retaliate, and Churchill did retaliate with
a ferocity that equalled and more than equalled Hogarth's.
With a rage that was prompted by friendship, yet with
a coolness that the importance of the cause he championed
called for, Churchill aimed blow after blow upon the
offending painter. The skill of a practised executioner
directed every stroke to a fresh spot, and with every stroke
brought blood. The satirist called upon Hogarth by his
name, to stand forth and be tried " in that great court
where conscience must preside," bade him review his life
from his earliest youth, and say if he could recall a single
instance in which

Thou with an equal eye didst genius view
And give to merit what was merit's due?
Genius and merit are a sure offence,
And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.

The poet goes on to say that " when Wilkes our country-

1768. CHURCHILL'S DENUNCIATION OF HOGARTH. 63

man, our common friend arose, his King, his country to
defend," Malice

Had killed thee, tottering on life's utmost verge,
Had Wilkes and Liberty escaped thy scourge.

And then, in some two hundred lines of strenuous rage,
Churchill denounced Hogarth with a denunciation that
was the more effective because it was accompanied by a
frank and full recognition of Hogarth's great gifts and
deserved title to fame. Hogarth retaliated by his famous
caricature of Churchill as a canonical bear with a pot of
porter in one paw and a huge cudgel in the other, the
knots on the cudgel being numbered as Lie 1, Tie 2, and
so forth. Instantly the great caricaturist was attacked by
others eager to strike at one wdio had struck so hard in his
day. The hatred of Bute was extended to the painter who
condescended to accept Bute's patronage, and who labored
to please his patron. Hogarth w^as derided as " The
Butyner," in mockery of his " Analysis of Beauty." It
would have been as lucky for Hogarth as it would have
been luckv for Bute to let Wilkes alone.

If Wilkes's release filled his supporters throughout the
country with delight, it only spurred on his enemies to
fresh attempts and fresh blunders. Had they left the
matter where it stood, even though it stood at a defeat to
them, they would have spared themselves much ignominy.
But the fury of the King inspired a fiercer fury in the
ministers and those who followed the ministers. Every
weapon at their command was immediately levelled at
Wilkes, even, it may not be unfairly asserted, the assassin's
weapon. Wilkes carried himself gallantly, defiantly, even
insolently. His attitude w^as not one to tempt angry
opponents to forbearance. His letters from the Tower
and after his release to Lord Halifax were couched in the
most contemptuous language. He brought an action
against Lord Halifax. He brought an action against Mr.
Wood, the Under-Secretary of State, and was awarded
£1,000 damages. When Lord Egremont died, in the Au-
gust of 1763, Wilkes declared that he had " been gathered

64 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlv.

to the dull of ancient days." He republished the numbers
of the North Briton in a single volume with notes, to prove
that the King's speech could constitutionally be only re-
garded as the utterance of the King's ministers. There
must have been a splendid stubbornness in the man which
enabled him to face so daringly, so aggressively, the des-
perate odds against him.

Every man who wished to curry favor with the King and
the King's ministers was ready to strike his blow at Wilkes.
There was not a bully among the hangers-on of the King
and ministers who was not eager to cross swords with
Wilkes or level pistol at him. Insult after insult, injury
after injury, were offered to the obnoxious politician. The
King dismissed him from the colonelcy of the Bucking-
hamshire Militia. Lord Temple was the Lord-Lieutenant
of the county of Buckinghamshire, and as Lord-Lieutenant
it was his duty to convey to Wilkes the news of his disgrace.
Never was such news so conveyed. Temple told Wilkes of
his dismissal in a letter of warm enthusiasm, of warm per-
sonal praise. The King immediately retaliated by remov-
ing Temple from the Lord-Lieutenancy and striking his
name off the list of privy councillors. The enmity was not
confined to the King and to the parasites who sought to
please the King. Dr. Johnson declared that if he were
the monarch he would have sent half a dozen footmen to
duck Wilkes for daring to censure his royal master or his
royal master's ministers. In the House of Commons the
hostility was at its height. When Parliament met Wilkes
sought to call the attention of the House to his case, but
was anticipated by Grenville, who read a royal message
directed at Wilkes, the result of which was that the House
voted that the number Forty-five of the North Briton was
a seditious libel, and ordered it to be burned by the com-
mon hangman.

The basest part of the attack upon Wilkes was the use
that his enemies made of his private papers, the way in
which they associated his political conduct with an offence
that was wholly unpolitical. It had amused Wilkes to set
up a private printing-press at his own house. At this

1763. WILKES AND HIS ACCUSERS. 65

press certain productions were printed which were no doubt
indecent, which were no doubt blasphemous, but which
were furthermore so foolish as to make both their indecency
and their blasphemy of very little effect. One was the
" Essay on Woman," written as a parody of Pope's " Essay
on Man ;" the other was an imitation of the " Yeni Crea-
tor." Xeither of these pieces of gross buffoonery bore any
author's name. Very few copies of them had been printed,
and these few solely for circulation among private friends
with a taste for foul literature. Xo offence had been com-
mitted, no offence had been intended, against public mo-
rality. It is certain, as far as any literary puzzle can be
regarded as certain, that Wilkes's share in the dirty busi-
ness was chiefly, if not entirely, limited to the printing of
the pages. The " Essay on Woman," as those who have
had the misfortune to read it know, is a dreary writer's
piece of schoolboy obscenity, if entirely disgusting, no less
entirely dull. The text of the " Essay " was composed in
great part, if not altogether, by Potter, the unworthy son
of the Archbishop of Canterbury and worthy member of
the ^ledmenham brotherhood. When Wilkes's papers were
seized, or by some other means, the Government got pos-
session of the proof sheets of the " Essay on Woman."
They immediately resolved, in defiance of public decenc}'',
of political moralit}', to use it as a weapon against their
enemy. It shows the shallo"«Tiess of their pretence at justi-
fication that they put the weapon into the hands of the
worst and basest of Wilkes's former friends and allies in
profligacy, into the hands of Lord Sandwich. On the first
night of the session Lord Sandwich rose in the House of
Lords, and proceeded to denounce Wilkes and the " Essay
on Woman " with a vehemence of false austerity that im-
pressed the assembly and infinitely delighted Lord Le De-
spencer, who had been the common friend, the brother
sinner of accuser and accused, and who now expressed
much entertainment at hearing the devil preach. The
spurious virtue of Sandwich was followed by the spurious
indignation of Warburton. The " Essay on Woman " con-
tained certain notes written in parody of Warburton's notes
VOL. ni. — 3

66 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.xlv.

to the '' Essay on Man/' just as the verses themselves were
a parody on Pope's poem. Warburton chose to regard this
as a breach of privilege, and he assailed Wilkes with even
greater fury than Sandwich had done, winding np by
apologizing to the devil for even comparing Wilkes to him.
An admiring House immediately voted the poems obscene,
libellous, and a breach of privilege. Two days afterwards
an address from the Lords called upon the King to prose-
cute Wilkes for blasphemy.

Wilkes was unable to face this new attack. He had al-
ready fallen a victim to an attack of another and no less
malignant nature. While the creatures of the Government
in the Upper House were trying to destroy his character, one
of their creatures in the Lower House was doing his best
to take Wilkes's life. This was a man named Martin, who
had been attacked in the North Briton some eight months
earlier. Martin seemed to have resolved upon revenge,
and to have set about obtaining it after the fashion not
of the gentleman, but of the bravo. Day by day, week by
week, month by month he practised himself in pistol shoot-
ing, until he considered that his skill was sufficient to
enable him to take the dastard's hazard in a duel. He
seized the opportunity of the debate on November 15th to
describe the writer in the North Brito7i as a " coward and
a malignant scoundrel." When Wilkes, on the following
day, avowed the authorship of the paper, Martin sent him
a challenge. The challenge was in all respects a strange
one. It was treacherous, because it came at the heels of
deliberate preparation. It was peremptory, for it called
upon Wilkes to meet his enemy in Hyde Park within an
hour. It contravened the laws of the duello, because Mar-
tin, who was the challenger, himself insisted on the use
of the weapons with which he had made himself so mur-
derously skilful. Wilkes accepted the duel with char-
acteristic courage, with characteristic rashness. He met
Martin in Hyde Park, and the amateur bravo shot Wilkes
through the body. It is a further characteristic of the
many elements of good that went to Wilkes's strange com-
position that, as he lay on the grass bleeding fast and ap-

1763. WILKES AS A CHAMPION OF POPULAR LIBERTY. 67

parently mortally wounded, his first care was not for him-
self and his hurt, but for the safety of his adversary, of
an adversary who deserved chivalrous treatment as little
as if he had taken Wilkes unawares and shot him in the
back.

While Wilkes was lying on what threatened to be his
death-bed the feeling on both sides only increased in in-
tensity. The Ministry were indifferent to the helplessness
of their enemy. Wilkes was expelled from the House of
Commons. He was expelled from the Militia. The com-
mon hangman was ordered publicly to burn the North
Briton, but the hangman was not suffered to obey the
order. An angry mob set upon him and upon the sheriffs
who were assisting at the ceremony, rescued the North
Briton from its persecutors, and in rude retaliation burned
instead the joint emblems of the popular disdain — a boot
and a petticoat. The people^s blood was up ; the symptoms
were significant enough for any save such a King and such
ministers to understand. While the Ministry, with a re-
finement of cruelty, were sending daily the King^s sur-
geons to watch Wilkes's health and proclaim the moment
when he might again be attacked, the Corporation of Dub-
lin was setting an example that was soon followed by the
Corporation of London and by other corporations in pre-
senting him with the freedom of its city. While Wilkes
was slowly journeying towards Paris, where his daughter
was, and passing, as he wrote, " the most unhappy days
he had known," an angry mob gibbeted the effigy of Bute
at one of the gates of Exeter, and kept the image swinging
there in derision for a fortnight in defiance of the authori-
ties. While Wilkes was languishing in foreign exile to
save his liberty and his very life from the malignity of his
enemies, his portrait, painted by Ee\Tiolds, was placed in
the Guildhall with an inscription in honor of the jealous
assertor of English liberty by law.

Wilkes was well advised in keeping out of England.
He had done his part. The decisions of Pratt in the Court
of Common Pleas, the decisions in the Guildhall, had con-
ferred a permanent benefit upon the English citizen. But

68 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlt.

Wilkes was not bound to put himself into the power of
his enemies in order to establish the authorship of the
" Essay on Woman." His enemies took as much advantage
as they could of his absence. He was found guilty by the
Court of King's Bench of having reprinted the number
Forty-five and of having written the " Essay on Woman."
As he did not appear to receive his sentence, he was
promptly outlawed for contumacy. Thus a Ministry wise
in their own conceit believed that they had got rid of
Wilkes for good and all. They did not note, or if they
noted did not heed, that the favorite sign of ale-houses
throughout the country was the head of Wilkes. They
were indifferent to the fact that Wilkes had come to be
regarded in all directions as the champion of popular lib-
erty. All they knew, all that they cared to know, was that
Wilkes was in exile, and was like enough to die in exile.
Even the success of " The Beggar's Opera " taught them
nothing, and yet the success of " The Beggar's Opera " was
a significant lesson. " The Beggar's Opera " was revived
at Covent Garden while the excitement about Wilkes was
at its height, and its audiences were as ready to read in
political allusions between the lines as they had been at the
time of its first production. The line " That Jemmy
Twitcher should peach on me I own rather surprises me "
was converted at once into an innuendo at the expense of
Lord Sandwich, to whom the name Jemmv Twitcher was
immediately applied by the public at large, almost to the
disuse, so Horace Walpole tells us, of his own title.

But the Ministry had so far triumphed that for four
years Wilkes remained away from England, drifting from
one foreign capital to another, making friends and win-
ning admirers everywhere, and employing his enforced
leisure in attempting great feats of literary enterprise. A
scheme for a Constitutional History of England was suc-
ceeded by a no less difficult and, as it proved, no less im-
practicable scheme. During Wilkes's exile he lost the most
famous of his enemies and the most famous of his friends.
On October 26, 1764, Hogarth died. It was commonly
said, and generally credited, that he died of a broken heart

1764. DEATH OF HOGARTH AND CHURCHILL. 69

in consequence of the furious attacks which had followed
upon his unhappy quarrel with Wilkes. It was a pity that
the closing hours of Hogarth's life should have been oc-
cupied with so petty and so regrettable a squabble. Ho-
garth was entirely in the wrong. Hogarth began the quar-
rel; and if Hogarth was eager to give hard knocks he
should have been readv to take hard knocks in return. But
the world at large may very well be glad that Hogarth did
lurk in the court by Justice Pratt and did make his mem-
orable sketch of Wilkes. The sketch serves to show us if
not what Wilkes exactly was, at least what Wilkes seemed
to be to a great many of his countrymen. The caricaturist
is a priceless commentator. If Hogarth indeed indirectly
shortened his life by his portrait of Wilkes, he gave, as
if by transfusion of blood, an increased and abiding vitality
to certain of the most interesting pages of history.

Within a few days of Hogarth, Churchill died. His
devotion to Wilkes prompted him to join him in his Con-
tinental banishment. He got as far as Boulogne, where
Wilkes met him, and at Boulogne he died of a fever, after
formally naming Wilkes as his literary executor. Wilkes,
who was always prompted by generous impulses, immedi-
ately resolved that he would edit a collected edition of
Churchill's works, and for a time he buried himself in
seclusion in Naples with the firm intention of carrying
out this purpose. But the task was too great both for the
man and for the conditions under which he was compelled
to work. In the first place, annotations of such poems as
Churchill's required constant reference to and minute ac-
quaintance with home affairs, such as it was well-nigh im-
possible for an exile to command. In the second place,
it was not an easy task for a man even with a very high
opinion of himself to play the part of editor and annotator
of poems a great part of which had him for hero. In
a very short time the work was abandoned, and Wilkes
emerged from his literary retreat.

Wilkes has been very bitterly and, as it would appear,
very unjustly upbraided for his seeming neglect of his dead
friend's wishes, of his dead defender's fame. In spite of

70 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlv.

those whose zeal for the memory of Churchill drives them
into antagonism with the memory of Wilkes, it may be
believed that the task was not one " for which Wilkes
could, with the greatest ease, have procured all the neces-
sary materials; and to which he was called not by the
sacred duties of friendship only, but by the plainest con-
siderations of even the commonest gratitude." Even if
Wilkes had been, which Wilkes was not, the kind of a man
to make a good editor, a good annotator, the difficulties
that lay in the way of the execution of his task were too
many. The fact that the poems were so largely about him-
self gave a sufficient if not an almost imperative reason
why he should leave the task alone. But in any case he
must have felt conscious of what events proved, that there
was other work for him to do in the world than the editing
of other men's satires.

Not, indeed, that the genius of Churchill needed any
tribute that Wilkes or anv one else could bestow. His
monument is in his own verses, in the story of his life. If
indeed the lines from "The Candidate" which are inscribed
on Churchill's tombstone tell the truth, if indeed his life
was " to the last enjoyed," part of that enjoyment may
well have come from the certainty that the revolutions of
time would never quite efface his name or obscure his
memory. The immortality of the satirist must almost in-
evitably be an immortality rather historical than artistic;
it is rather what he says than how he says it which is ac-
counted unto him for good. As there are passages of great
poetic beauty in the satires of Juvenal, so there are passages
of poetic beauty in the satires of Churchill. But they are
both remembered, the great Roman and the great English-
man, less for what beauty their work permitted than for
the themes on which they exercised their wit. The study
of Churchill is as essential to a knowledge of the eigh-
teenth century in London as the study of Juvenal is essen-
tial to a knowledge of the Rome of his time. That fame
Churchill had secured for himself; to that fame nothing
that Willies or any one else might do could add.

1765. GKEA'VILLE AS BUTE'S SUCCESSOR. 71

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE AMERICAN COLONIES.

Wilkes in exile had ceased to exist in the minds of the
King's Ministry. In Naples or in Paris he was as little
to be feared as Churchill in his grave. An insolent subject
had presumed directly to attack the King's advisers and
indirectly the King himself, and the insolent subject was a
fugitive, a broken, powerless man. The young King might
well be pleased with the success of his policy. In pursuance
of that policy he had reduced the great fabric of the Whig
party to a ruin, and had driven the factious demagogue
who opposed him into an ignominious obscurity. To a
temper flushed by two such triumphs opposition of any
kind was well-nigh welcome for the pleasure of crushing
it, and was never less likely to be encountered in a spirit
of conciliation. Yet the King was destined in the very
glow of his success to find himself face to face with an
opposition which he Avas not able to crush, and on which
any attempt at conciliation was but so much waste of time.
The King's new and formidable opponent was his own chief
minister.

When Bute, perhaps in fear for his life, perhaps in
despair at his unpopularity, resigned the office he filled
so ill, he hoped to find in his successor Grenville a supple
and responsive creature, through whom Bute would still
be as powerful as before. Bute had to taste a bitter dis-
appointment. Grenville's gloomy spirit and narrow mind
unfitted him, indeed, for the office he was called upon to
hold, but they afforded him a stubbornness which declined
to recognize either the authority of the favorite or the
authority of the favorite's master. By the time that Gren-
ville had been two years in office the King hated him as

72 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvi.

bitterly as he had ever hated Pitt. If Bute was impotently
furious to find himself discarded and despised by his in-
tended tool, the King was still more exasperated to find that
the King's servant proposed to be the King's master. Gren-
ville was a good lawyer and a good man of business, but
he was extremely dull and extremely tactless, and he was
at as much pains to offend the King as if he intended
offence. He was overbearing in manner to a monarch who
was himself overbearing; he badgered him with long ram-
bling discourses upon his royal duty ; he deliberately wound-
ed him in his two warmest affections, his love for his
mother and his regard for Bute. Grenville was right
enough in his objection to the undue influence of Bute,
but his animadversions came with a bad grace from the
man who was to do as much harm to England as Bute had
ever done. As Grenville had triumphed over Bute and
driven him into the background, so he wished to triumph
over the Princess Dowager and deprive her of power. In
1765 the King fell ill for the first time of that malady
from which he was to suffer so often and so heavilv. As
soon as he was restored to health he proposed the intro-
duction of a Ee2:encv Bill to settle satisfactorilv the diffi-
culties that might very well arise if the heir to the throne
were to succeed before the age of eighteen.

Grenville acted in the matter of the Eegency Bill as
if the dearest wish of his heart were to flout the King's
wishes and to wound his feelings. The King wished, lest
he should again be stricken with illness while the heir-
apparent was still an infant, to be given the right to name
a regent by will. Grenville and Grenville's colleagues,
who were now as jealous of the authority of Bute as any
subscriber to the North Briton, saw or professed to see in
the King's proposal an insidious scheme for placing little
less than royal power within the reach of the favorite.
They made it impossible for the King to name Bute by
limiting his choice to the members of the royal family.
But they went further than this in affronting the King.
They limited his choice of a regent to members of the
royal family, but they also limited the number of mem-

1765. THE KIXG SEEKS TO REMOVE GRENViLLE. 73

bers of the royal family from whom he might make his
choice. They insisted that the name of the King's mother,
of the Princess Dowager, should not be included in the
Bill. It is difficult to understand how the King could ever
have been induced to consent to this peculiarly galling in-
sult. It seems that Grenville assured him, on entirely
false premises, that if her name were mentioned in the
Bill the House of Commons would be certain to strike it
out. Preferring the private to the public affront, George
surrendered to his minister, only to find that his minister
was flagrantly misinformed. The friends of the Princess
in the House of Commons moved that her name should be
written into the Bill, and they carried their point in Gren-
ville's teeth. Grenville had played the tyrant and George
had accepted the humiliation for nothing. George tried
at once to overthrow Grenville. In those days a king who
disliked a minister had a very simple and easy way of
showing and of gratifying his dislike. He could dismiss
his minister without ceremony and without question.
Nowadays a minister depends for his power and tenure of
office upon the majority in the House of Commons, and a
sovereign would not think of dismissing a minister, or of
doing anything else than accepting formally the decision
of the House of Commons. But when George the Third
was king the only check upon the royal power of dismiss-
ing a minister lay in the possible difficulty of finding an-
other to take his place. This was the check George now
met. He wanted with all his heart to dismiss Grenville.
He turned to Cumberland of Culloden, and implored him
to bring back Pitt and enable him to get rid of Grenville.
Cumberland tried and Cumberland failed. Pitt was in
one of those paroxysms of illness which seem to have com-
pletely overmastered him. He was almost entirely under
the influence of Temple. Temple's detestation of Bute
reconciled him to Grenville's policy when he found that
Grenville seemed to share that detestation. Temple per-
suaded Pitt to refuse. Cumberland came back to the King
to tell of his failure. There was nothing to be done.
Grenville had to be kept on. If the enforced association

74 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvi.

did not make the sovereign and his minister better friends,
if both smarted under a sense of humiliation and defeat,
it is scarcely surprising that the stubbornness of both was
intensified in cases where their stubbornness was pitted
not against each other, but against a common obstacle.
Such a case was then in existence.

Three thousand miles away the wealth and power of
England was represented by a number of settlements occu-
pying a comparatively narrow strip of territory on the
Atlantic seaboard of the North American continent. The
American colonies were the proudest possessions of the
British Empire. Through generation after generation,
for more than two centuries, English daring and English
courage had built up those colonies, reclaiming them from
the wilderness and the swamp, wresting them from wild
man and wild beast, fighting for them with European
power after European power. They were a source of
wealth, a source of honor, and a source of strength to Eng-
land. Tliey were cheaply bought with the brave lives that
had been given for them. It is hard to realize that any
sovereign, that any statesman could fail to see how precious
a possession they were, or how unwise any course of action
must be which could tend in any way to lessen their affec-
tion or to alienate their support. Yet such a sovereign
was upon the throne and such a minister was by his side.

Mr. Willett, senior, in " Barnaby Eudge," explains to
his friends that his absent son Joe is away in " the Sal-
wanners in America, where the war is." Mr. Willett's
knowledge and appreciation of the American colonies
represents pretty well for profundity and accuracy the
knowledge and appreciation of the majority of the English
people in the times contemporary with, and indeed long
subsequent to, the quarrels between the old country and
the new. To the bulk of the British people America was
a vague and shadowy region, a sort of no-man's land,
peopled for the m.ost part with black men and red men,
and dimly associated with sugar-planting and the tobacco
trade. Its distance alone made it seem sufficiently un-
real to those whose wav of life was not drawn bv business or

1765. THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 75

by politics into association with its inhabitants. The
voyage to America was a grimly serious adventure, calling
for fortitude and triple brass. The man was indeed lucky
who could make the passage from shore to shore in six
weeks of stormy sea, and the journey generally took a
much longer time, and under the same conditions of dis-
comfort and of danger that attended on the voyage of the
" Mayflower." The vast majority of Englishmen con-
cerned themselves as little with America as they concerned
themselves with Hindostan. Both were British possessions,
and as such important, but both were too far away to
assume any very substantial reality in the consciousness
of the bulk of the English people. Of the minority who
did possess anything that can be called knowledge of the
American colonies, the majority imbibed its information
from official sources, from the reports of governors of
provinces and official servants of the Crown. These re-
ports were for the most part as reliable for a basis on which
to build an intelligent appreciation as the legends of the
Algonquins or the myths of the Six Xations.

If the English knowledge of the American colonies had
been a little more precise it would have run to this effect.
The colonies of the New England region were mainly
peopled by a hardy, industrious, sober, frugal race, still
strongly Puritanical in profession and in practice, and
knowing but little of the extremes of fortune. Neither
great poverty nor great wealth was common among those
sturdy farmers, who tended their own farms, tilled their
own land, lived upon their o^vn produce, and depended for
their clothing and for most of the necessaries of life upon
the work of their own hands. A slender population was
scattered far asunder in lonely townships and straggling
villages of wooden houses, built for the most part in the
formidable fashion imposed upon men who might at any
time have to resist the attacks of Indians. Inside these
villages the rough, rude justice of the Puritan days still
persisted. The stocks and the pillory and the stool of
repentance were things of the present. A shrewish house-
wife might still be made to stand at her cottage door with

'76 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlti.

the iron gag of the scold fastened upon her shameful face.
A careless Sabbatarian might still find himself exposed to
the scorn of a congregation, with the words " A wanton
gospeller " placarded upon his ignominious breast. In-
side those wooden houses a rude simplicity and a rough
plenty prevailed. The fare was simple ; the labor was hard ;
simple fare and stern labor between them reared a stalwart,
God-fearing race. Its positive pleasures were few and
primitive. Husking-bees, quiltings, a rare dance, filled
up the measure of its diversions. But the summer smiled
upon those steadfast, earnest, rigorous citizens, and in the
wild and bitter winters each household would gather about
the cheerful fire in the great chimney which in some of
those cottages formed the major part of the building, and
find content and peace in quiet talk and in tales of the
past, of the French and Indian wars, and of their ances-
tors, long ago, in old England. Those same great fires
that were the joy of winter were also one of its troubles.
Once lit, with all the difficulty attendant upon flint and
steel and burnt rag, they had to be kept alight from morn-
ing till night and from night till morning. If a fire went
out it was a woful business to start it again with the re-
luctant tinder-box. There was, indeed, another way, an
easier way, of going round to a neighbor and borrowing a
shovelful of hot embers wherewith to kindle the blackened
hearth. But in villages built for the most part of wood
this might well be regarded as a dangerous process. So
the law did regard it, and to start a fire in this lazy, loung-
ing fashion was penalized as sternly as any breach of the
Sabbath or of public decorum, and these were sternly
punished. Drunkenness was grimly frowned down. Only
decent. God-fearing men were allowed to keep taverns, and
the names of persons who had earned the reputation of
intemperance were posted up in those taverns as a warn-
ing to the host that he should sell such men no liquor. In
Connecticut tobacco was forbidden to any one under twenty
years of age, unless on the express order of a physician.
Those who were over twenty were only allowed to smoke
once a day, and then not within ten miles of any dwelling.

1765. AMERICAN COLONIAL CUSTOMS. 77

In spite of their democratic simplicity, even the New
England colonists had their distinctions of rank as clearly
marked as among the people of old England. The gentry
dressed in one fashion; the working classes dressed in
another. The family rank of students determined their
places in the lists of Harvard College and Yale College.
In Boston, the chief New England town, life was naturally
more elaborate and more luxurious than in the country
places. Ladies wore fine clothes and sought to be modish
in the London manner; gentlemen made a brave show
in gayly colored silks and rich laces, gold-headed canes and
costly snuff-boxes. Even in Boston, however, life was
simpler, quieter, and sweeter than it was across the At-
lantic; there was Puritanism in its atmosphere — Puritan-
ism and the serenity of learning, of scholarship, of study.

There was much more wealth in the province of New
York; there was much more display in the southern
colonies. New York was as famous for its Dutch cleanli-
ness and its Dutch comfort as for its Dutch windmills that
twirled their sails against the sky in all directions. There
was store of plate and fine linen in New York cupboards.
There were good things to eat and drink in New York
households. Down South the gentlefolk lived as gentle-
folk lived in England, with perhaps a more lavish ostenta-
tion, a more liberal hospitality. They loved horses and
dogs, horse-racing and fox-hunting, dancing, music, high
living, all things that added to the enjoyment of life.
Their servants were their own black slaves. The great
city of the South was Charleston, the third of the colonial
cities. The fourth and last was Philadelphia, the " f aire
greene country town " of Penn's love, the last in our order,
but the first in size and splendor, with its flagged side-
walks that had made it famous throughout the American
continent as if it had been one of the seven wonders of
the world, with its stately houses of brick and stone, its
avenues of trees, its fruitful orchards and sweet-smelling
gardens. The people of Philadelphia had every right to
be proud of their city.

Communication was not easy between one colony and an-

78 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvi.

other, between one town and another. But neither was it
easy in England. For the most part the conditions of life
were much the same on one side of the Atlantic as on the
other. The whole population, white and black, freeman
and slave, was about two million souls. They were well-
to-do, peaceable, hard-working — those who had to work,
good fighters — those who had to fight, all very willing to
be loyal and all very well worth keeping loyal. It was
worth their sovereign's while, it was worth the while of
his ministers, to know something about these colonists
and to try and understand natures that were not at all
difficult to understand. Had they been treated as the
Englishmen they were, all would have been well. But the
King who gloried in the name of Briton did not extend
its significance far enough.

It is not easy to understand the temper which animated
all the King's actions towards the American colonies.
They were regarded, and with justice, as one of the great-
est glories of the English crown ; they were no less a source
of wealth than of pride to the English people. Yet the
English prince persisted in pursuing towards them a policy
which can only be most mildly characterized as a policy
of exasperation. When George was still both a young man
and a young king, the relations between the mother coun-
try and her children across the Atlantic were, if not
wholly harmonious, at least in such a condition as to
render harmony not merely possible, but probable. The
result of a long and wearing war had been to relieve the
colonists directly from one and indirectly from the other
of their two greatest perils. By the terms on which peace
was made the power of France was broken on the North
American continent. The French troops had been with-
drawn across the seas. The Lilies of France floated over
no more important possessions in the new world than a
few insignificant fishing stations near Newfoundland. A
dangerous and dreaded enemy to colonial life and liberty
could no longer menace or alarm. As a consequence of
the withdrawal of the French troops the last united attack
of the red men against the white was made and failed.

1765. FRICTION WITH THE AMERICAN COLONISTS. 79

The famous conspiracy of Pontiac was the desperate at-
tempt of the Indian allies of France to annihilate the
colonists by a concerted attack of a vast union of tribes.
The conspiracy failed after a bloody war that lasted for
nearly two years. Pontiac, the Indian chief who had helped
to destroy Braddock, and who had dreamed that all the
English might as easily be destroyed, was defeated and
killed; his league was dissipated, and the power of the
red men as a united force broken for good. Under such
conditions of immunity from long-standing and pressing
perils, due in the main to the triumph of British arms,
the colonists might very well have been expected to regard
with especial favor their association with England. If
there had been differences between the two countries for
long enough, no moment could have been apter for the
adoption of a policy calculated to lessen and ultimately to
abolish those differences than the moment when the wearv
and wearing Seven Years' War came to its close. A far-
seeing monarch, advised and encouraged by far-seeing
statesmen, might have soldered close the seeming impossi-
bilities and made them kiss. Had the throne even been
filled by a sovereign slightly less stubborn, had the throne
been surrounded by servants slightly less bigoted, the
arrogant patronage of the one part and the aggressive
protestation of the other part might have been judiciously
softened into a relationship wisely paternal and loyally
filial. The advantage of an enduring union between the
mother country and her colonies was obvious to any
reasonable observer. A common blood, a common tongue.
a common pride of race and common interests should have
kept them together. But the relations were not amicable.
The colonies were peopled by men who were proud indeed
of being Englishmen, but by reason of that very pride
were jealous of any domination, even at the hands of Eng-
lishmen. The mother country, on the other hand, re-
garded the colonies, won with English hands and watered
with English blood, as being no less portion and parcel of
English soil because three thousand miles of stormy ocean
lay between the port upon the Severn and the port upon

80 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvi.

the Charles Kiver. She came to regard as mere ingrati-
tude those assertions of independence which most charac-
teristicaiiy proved the colonies to be worthy of it and of
her. The theory of the absolute dominion of England
over the American colonies might have died a natural
death, a harmonious settlement of grievances and adjust-
ment of powers might have knitted the two peoples to-
gether in an enduring league, if it had not been for George
the Third.

The mind of George the Third was saturated with a be-
lief in his personal importance; the heart of George the
Third was exalted by the determination to play a domi-
nating part in the country of his birth and the history of
his reign. The hostility to the exercise of home authority
latent in the colonies irritated the King like a personal
affront. To resist or to resent the authority of the Govern-
ment of England was to resist and to resent the authority
of the sovereign who was determined that he would be to
all intents and purposes the Government of England. If
the relationship between England and America had been
far happier than George found it at the time of his acces-
sion, it probably would not long have preserved a whole-
some tenor. But the relationship was by no means happy.
The colonial assemblies were for the most part at logger-
heads with the colonial governors. These governors, little
viceroys with petty courts, extremely proud of their power
and self-conscious in their authority, generally detested
the popular assemblies upon whom they were obliged to
depend for the payment of their salaries. Their dislike
found secret expression in the letters which it was the duty
and the pleasure of the colonial governors to address to
the Home Government. The system of colonial adminis-
tration in England was as simple as it was unsatisfactory.
At its head was a standing committee of the Privy Council
which had been established in 1675. This committee was
known at length as " The Lords of the Committee of Trade
and Plantations," and in brief and more generally as " The
Lords of Trade." It was the duty of the colonial governors
to make lengthy reports to the Lords of Trade on the

1765. ENGLAND AND HER COLONIAL GOVERNORS. 81

commercial and other conditions of their governorships.
It was too often their pleasure to supplement these State
papers with lengthy and embittered private letters, ad-
dressed to the same body, making the very most and worst
of the difficulties they had to deal with in their work.
The colonies, as represented in these semi-official com-
munications, were turbulent, contumacious, discontented,
disrespectful to viceregal dignity, rebellious against the
authority of Great Britain. These communications in-
formed the minds of the Lords of Trade, who in their turn
influenced those who were responsible for the conduct of
the King's Government. Thus a vicious system, acting
in a vicious circle, kept alive an irritation and fostered a
friction that only increased with the increasing years. It
had always been the worst feature of England's colonial
policy that she was ever ready to accept with too little
question the animadversions of the governors upon the
governed. The Lords of Trade accepted the communica-
tions of the colonial governors as gospel truth, and as
gospel truth it was taken in its turn by the ministers to
whom it was transmitted and by the monarch to whom
they carried it. The general public were as ignorant of
and as indifferent to the American colonies as if they were
situated in the mountains of the moon. The major part of
the small minority that really did seek or desire informa-
tion about America gained it from the same poisonous
sources that inspired the Government, and based their
theories of colonial reform upon the peevish epistles, often
mendacious and always one-sided, which fed the intelli-
gences of the Lords of Trade. The few who were really
well informed, who had something like as accurate an
appreciation of the colony of Massachusetts as they had
of the county of Middlesex, were powerless to counteract
the general ignorance and the more particular misconcep-
tion. It was the cherished dream of authority in England
to bring the colonies into one common rule under one
head in such a way as to strengthen their military force
while it lessened their legislative independence. It now
seemed as if with the right King and the right Ministry

82 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvi.

this dream might become a reality. In George the Third
and in George Grenville prerogative seemed to have found
the needed instruments to subjugate the American
colonies.

Many of the grievances of the colonies were grave
enough. If some of the injuries that England inflicted
upon her great dependency seem petty in the enumeration^
a number of small causes of irritation are no less danger-
ous to peace between nations than some great injustice.
But lest the small stings should not be enough, the Govern-
ment was resolved that the great injustice should not be
wanting. The colonists resented the intermittent tyranny
and the persistent truculence of the most part of the royal
governors. The colonists resented the enforced transporta-
tion of criminals. The colonists resented the action of
Great Britain in annulling the colonial laws made to keep
out slaves. It is melancholy to reflect that the curse of
slavery, for which Englishmen of later days often so bit-
terly and so rightly reproached America, was unhappily
enforced upon a country struggling to be rid of it by Eng-
lishmen who called themselves English statesmen. The
colonists resented the astonishing restrictions which it
pleased the mother country to place, in what she believed to
be her own interest, upon colonial trade. These laws com-
manded that all trade between the colonies should be car-
ried on in ships built in England or the colonies. This
barred out all foreigners, especially the Dutch, then the
chief carriers for Europe. They compelled the American
farmer to send his products across the ocean to England.
They forbade the exportation of sugar, tobacco, cotton,
wool, indigo, ginger, dyeing-woods to any part of the
world except to England or some English colony. They
only allowed exportation of fish, fur, oil, ashes, and lumber
in ships built in England or the colonies. They forced the
colonists to buy all their European goods in England and
bring them over to America in English vessels. They
prohibited the colonial manufacture of any article that
could be manufactured in England. They harassed and
minimized the trade between one colony and another. No

neo. TRADE RESTRICTIONS UPON THE COLONIES. 83

province was permitted to send woollen goods, hats, or
ironware to another province. Some of the regulations
read more like the rules of some Turkish pashalik than the
laws framed by one set of Englishmen for another set of
Englishmen. In the Maine woods, for instance, no tree
that had a diameter greater than two feet at a foot above
the ground could be cut down, except to make a mast for
some ship of the Ko3^al Navy.

Bad and bitter as these laws were in theory, they did
not for long enough prove to be so bad in practice, for the
simple reason that they were very easy to evade and not
very easy to enforce. The colonists met what many
of them regarded as an elaborate system for the restriction
of colonial trade by a no less elaborate system of smug-
gling. Smuggling was eavsy because of the long extent of
sea-coast. Smuggling was lucrative, as few" considered it
an offence to evade laws that were generally resented as
unfair. When the Sugar Act of 1733 prohibited the im-
portation of sugar and molasses from the French West
Indies except on payment of a prohibitory duty, the New
England colonists, who did a thriving trade in the off-
spring of the union of sugar and molasses, rum, found
themselves faced by a serious problem. Should they accept
the Act and its consequential ruin of their trade or ignore
it, and by resorting to smuggling prosper as before ? With-
out hesitation they decided that their rights as English-
men were assailed by the obnoxious imposition, and they
turned to smuggling with the light heart that is conscious
of a heavy purse. The contraband trade was brisk, the
contrabandists cheerful, and so long as England made no
serious attempt to put into operation laws that the genial
and business-like smugglers of the Atlantic sea-coast re-
garded as preposterous nobody complained, and interna-
tional relations were cordial. But the situation was not
seen with so bright an eye by the British merchant. He
witnessed with indignation the failure of the attempt to
monopolize the commerce of the colonies to his own ad-
vantage, and he clamored for the restoration of his fat
monopoly. His clamor was unheeded while the great war

84 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlyl

was running its course. But with the end of the war and
the new conditions consequent upon the advent of a new
King with a brand-new theory of kingship and prerogative,
the situation began to change.

The colonial policy of George Grenville's Administra-
tion might be conveniently considered under three heads.
The Ministry was resolved, in the first place, to enforce
Acts of Trade which smuggling had long rendered mean-
ingless in the American colonies. The Ministry was re-
solved, in the second place, to establish a permanent gar-
rison of some ten thousand men in America. The Ministry
was resolved, in the third place, to make the colonists pay
a third of the cost of keeping up this garrison by a direct
taxation. It was easy enough for Grenville to formulate
the three ministerial purj^oses, but it was not very easy to
give them any effect. The colonists resented and the
colonists resisted all three proposals. If they were tech-
nically wrong in their resentment at the enforcement of
the Acts of Trade, they were reasonable in their reluctance
to accept the proposed garrison, and they were justified
by every law of liberty and of patriotism in resisting with
all the strength at their command the proposed scheme of
taxation.

The English Government began its task by a rigorous
attempt to enforce the Acts of Trade. Grenville had
made up his narrow mind that the colonies should be
compelled to adhere to the conditions which obliged them
to trade with England only for England's principal manu-
factures. There should be no more smuggling from Span-
ish America, no more smuggling from the West Indies.
To enforce this determination, which deprived the colo-
nists at a blow of the most profitable part of their trade, the
Government employed certain general search warrants,
which, if strictly legal in the letter, were conceived in a
spirit highly calculated to goad a proud people into illegal
defiance. They goaded one proud man into active protest.
A distinguished servant of the Government, James Otis,
the King's Advocate, resigned his office in order that he
might be at liberty to denounce the Writs of Assistance.

1765. JAMES OTIS AND JOHN ADAMS. 85

Otis may have been technically wrong in resisting the
Writs of Assistance, but it can scarcely be questioned that
as a philosophic politician, who was devoted to the inter-
ests of his countrymen, he was ethically in the right. Otis
was thirty-six years old ; he was known to his compatriots
as a graduate of Harvard, an able lawyer, a zealous student
of classical literature, and an author of repute on Latin
prosody. The issue of the Writs of Assistance converted
the respected and respectable public servant into a con-
spicuous statesman as hotly applauded by the one side as
he was execrated by the other. A single speech lifted him
from an esteemed obscurity to a leading place among the
champions of colonial rights against imperial aggressions.
The assemblage which Otis addressed, which Otis domi-
nated, was forever memorable in the history of America.
**' Otis was a flame of fire." The words are the words of
one who was a young man vv^hen Otis spoke, who listened
and took notes as the words fell from Otis's lips. " With
a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a
rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion
of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into
futurity, and a rapid torrent of tempestuous eloquence, he
hurried away all before him. Then and there was the first
scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims
of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence
was born. Every man of an immense crowded audience
appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up arms
against Writs of Assistance."

The youth who took notes of the words of Otis, and who
was inspired by them with the desire to rise and mutiny,
was destined to play even a greater part in the history of
his country. If Otis was one of the first to assert actively,
by deed as well as by word, the determination of the
colonies to oppose and, if needs were, to defy the domina-
tion of England, John Adams was the first to applaud his
action and to appreciate its importance. In 1763 John
Adams was no more than a promising young lawyer who
had struggled from poverty and hardship to regard and
authority, and who had wrested from iron Fortune a great

86 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvi

deal of learning if very little of worldly wealth. Short
of stature, sanguine of temperament, the ruddy, stubborn,
passionate small man had fought his way step by step
from the most modest if not the most humble beginnings,
as zealously as if he had known of the fame that was yet
to be his and the honor that he was to give to his name and
hand down to a long line of honorable descendants. If the
ministers who weakly encouraged or meanly obeyed King
George in his frenzy against America could have under-
stood even dimly the temper of a race that was rich in
sons of whom John Adams was but one and not the most
illustrious even to them, there must have come dimly some
consciousness of the forces they had to encounter, and the
peril of their policy. But the Ministry knew nothing of
Adams, and knew only of Otis as a mutinous and meddle-
some official. Otis and his protest signified nothing to
them, and they would have smiled to learn that young Mr.
Adams, the lawyer, believed that American independence
was born when Mr. Otis's oration against Writs of Assist-
ance breathed into the colonies the breath of life that was
to make them a nation.

If Otis voiced and Adams echoed the feelings of the
colonists against Writs of Assistance and the enforcement
of the Acts of Trade, they might no less eloquently have
interpreted the general irritation at the proposed estab-
lishment of a permanent garrison on the continent. The
colonists saw no need of such a garrison so late in the day.
When the Frenchmen held the field, when the red man was
on the war path, then indeed the presence of more British
soldiers might have become welcome. But the flag of
France no longer floated over strong places, no longer flut-
tered at the head of invasion. The strength of the savage
was crippled if not crushed. The colonists had nothing
to fear from the one and little to fear from the other foe.
They thought that they had much to fear from the pres-
ence of a British garrison of ten thousand men. This
British garrison might, on occasion, be used not in defence
of their liberties, but in diminution of their liberties. The
irritation against the proposed garrison might have smoul-

1765. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. Si

dered out if it had not been fanned into a leaping flame
by the means proposed for the maintenance of the garrison.
Grenville proposed to raise one-third of the cost of support
from the colonies by taxation. No proposal could have
been better calculated to goad every colony and every col-
onist into resistance, and to fuse the scattered elements of
resistance into a solid whole. More than two generations
earlier both Massachusetts and New York had formally
denied the right of the Home Government to levy any tax
upon the American colonies. The colonies were not rep-
resented at Westminster — could not, under the conditions,
be represented at Westminster. The theory that there
should be no taxation without representation was as dear
to the American for America as it was dear to the Eng-
lishman for England. Successive English Governments,
forced in times of financial pressure wistfully to eye
American prosperity, had dreamed, and only dreamed, of
raising money by taxing the well-to-do colonies. It was re-
served to the Government headed by Grenville, in its mad-
ness, to attempt to make the dream a reality. It is true
that even Grenville did not propose, did not venture to
suggest that the American colonies should be taxed for
the direct benefit of the English Government. He brought
forward his scheme of taxation as a benefit to America,
as a contribution to the expense of keeping up a garrison
that was only established in the interests of America and
for America's welfare. In this spirit of benevolence, and
with apparent confidence of success, Grenville brought for-
ward his famous Stamp Act.

There were statesmen in England who saw with scarcely
less indignation than the Americans themselves, and with
even more dismay, the unfolding of the colonial policy
of the Government. These protested against the intoler-
able weight of the duties imposed, and arraigned the folly
which, by compelling these duties to be paid in specie,
drained away the little ready money remaining in the
colonies, " as though the best way to cure an emaciated
body, whose juices happened to be tainted, was to leave it
no juices at all." They assailed the injustice that refused

88 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvl

to recognize as legal tender any paper bills of credit issued
by the colonies. Politicians, guided by the intelligence
and the inspiration of Burke, applauded the Americans
for their firmness in resolving to subsist to the utmost of
their power upon their own productions and manufactures.
They urged that it could not be expected that the colonists,
merely out of a compliment to the mother country, should
submit to perish for thirst with water in their own wells.
And these clear-sighted politicians saw plainly enough that
such blows as the Government were aiming at America
must in the end recoil upon Great Britain herself. They
appreciated the injury that must be done to British com-
merce by even a temporary interruption of the intercourse
between the two countries. But bad as the restrictive
measures were in their immediate, as well as in their ulti-
mate consequences, worse remained behind. The proposed
Stamp Act scarcely shocked Otis or Adams more directly
and cruelly than it shocked the soundest and sanest think-
ers on the other side of the Atlantic. Words which cer-
tainly expressed the thoughts of Burke declared that the
approval, even with opposition, given to such a measure
as the Stamp Act, the bare proposal of which had given
so much offence, argued such a want of reflection as could
scarcely be paralleled in the public councils of any country.
The King's speech at the opening of Parliament on
January 10, 1765, gave unmistakable evidence of the
temper of the monarch and of the Ministry. It formally
expressed its reliance on the wisdom and firmness of Par-
liament in promoting the proper respect and obedience due
to the legislative authority of Great Britain. The Govern-
ment was resolved to be what it considered firm, and it un-
doubtedly believed that a proper show of firmness would
easily overbear any opposition that the colonists might
make to the proposed measure. The Stamp Act was in-
troduced, the Stamp Act w^as debated upon; in due time
the Stamp Act passed through both Houses, and in con-
sequence of the ill health of the King received the royal
assent by commission on March 22, 1765. The first foolish
challenge to American loyalty was formally made, and

1765. SAMUEL ADAMS. 89

America was not slow to accept it. It may be admitted that
in itself the Stamp Act was not a conspicuously unfair or
even a conspicuous^ unreasonable measure. It was a
legitimate and perfectly fair way of raising money from
a taxable people. It was neither legitimate nor fair when
imposed upon unrepresented colonists. But if it had been
the sanest and most statesmanlike scheme for raising
money ever conceived by a financier, it would have de-
served and would have received no less hostility from the
American people. The principle involved was everything.
To admit in any degree the right of Great Britain to im-
pose at her pleasure a tax upon the colonists was to sur-
render in ignominy the privileges and to betray the duties
of free men. Any expectations of colonial protest that the
Ministry may have allowed themselves to entertain were
more than fulfilled. Colony after colony, great town after
great town, great man after great man, made haste to pro-
test with an emphasis that should have been significant
against the new measure. Boston led the way. Boston's
most distinguished citizen, Boston's most respected son
was the voice not merely of his town, not merely of his
State, but of the colonial continent. Ten years later the
name of Samuel Adams was known, hated, and honored
on the English side of the Atlantic.

Samuel Adams was one of those men whom Nature
forges to be the instruments of revolution. His three-and-
forty years had taught him much: the value of silence,
the knowledge of men, the desire to change the world and
the patience to bide his time. A few generations earlier
he might have made a right-hand man to Cromwell and
held a place in the heart of Hampden. On the very
threshold of his manhood, when receiving his degree of
Master of Arts at Plarvard, he asserted his defiant democ-
racy in a dissertation on the right of the people of a com-
monwealth to combine against injustice on the part of the
head of the State. The badly dressed man with the grave
firm face of a Pilgrim Father was as ready and as resolute
to oppose King George as any Pym or Vane had been ready
and resolute to oppose Charles Stuart. He had at one

00 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlti.

time devoted himself to a commercial career, with no great
success. He was made for a greater game than commerce ;
he had the temper and he gained the training for a public
life, and the hour when it came found that the man was
ready. When the citizens of Boston met to protest against
the Stamp Act Samuel Adams framed the first resolutions
that denied to the Parliament of Great Britain the right
to impose taxes upon her colonies.

If Massachusetts was the first to protest with no uncer-
tain voice against the Stamp Act, other colonies were
prompt to follow her example, and to prove that they pos-
sessed sons no less patriotic. Virginia was as vehement
and as vigorous in opposition as Massachusetts. One
speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses made the name
of Patrick Henry famous. Patrick Henry was a young
man who tried many things and failed in them before he
found in the practice of the law the appointed task for
his rare gifts of reasoning and of eloquence. A speech in
Hanover Court House in defence of the people against a
suit of the parish clergy gave him sudden fame. As grave
of face as Samuel Adams, as careless of his attire, tall and
lean, stamped with the seal of the speaker and the thinker,
Patrick Henry at nine-and-twenty was already a very dif-
ferent man from the youth who five years earlier seemed
destined to be but a Jack of all trades and master of none,
an unsuccessful trader, an unsuccessful farmer, whose
chief accomplishments in life were hunting and fishing,
dancing and riding. The debate on the Stamp Act gave
him a great opportunity. As he addressed his words of
warning to the stubborn sovereign across the sea his pas-
sion seemed to get the better of his prudence and to tempt
him into menace. " Caesar," he said, " had his Brutus,
Charles the First his Cromwell." He was going on to say
" and George the Third," when he was interrupted by
a,ngry cries of " Treason !" from the loyalists among his
hearers. Patrick Henry waited until the noise subsided,
and then quietly completed his sentence, " George the
Third may profit by their example. If this be treason,
make the most of it." The words were not treasonable.

1765. THE OPPOSITION TO THE STAMP ACT. 91

but they were revolutionary. They served to carry the
name of Patrick Henry to every corner of the continent
and across the Atlantic. They made him a hero and idol
in the eyes of the colonists; they made him a rebel in the
eyes of the Court at St. James's.

Massachusetts had set an example which Virginia had
bettered; Massachusetts was now to better Virginia. If
Virginia, prompted by Patrick Henry, declared that she
alone had the right to tax her own citizens, Massachusetts,
inspired by James Otis, summoned a congress of deputies
from all the colonial assemblies to meet in common con-
sultation upon the common danger. This congress, the
first but not the last, memorable but not most memorable,
met in Xew York in the early November of 1765. Xine
colonies were represented at its table — Massachusetts,
South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. The
congress passed a series of resolutions, as firm in their
purpose as moderate in their language, putting forward
the grievances and asserting the rights of the colonies.

But the protests against the Stamp Act were not limited
to eloquent orations or formal resolutions. Deeds, as well
as words, made plain the purpose of the American people.
Riots broke out in colony after colony ; the most and worst
in Massachusetts. Boston blazed into open revolt against
authority. There were two Government officials in Bos-
ton who were especially unpopular with the mob — Andrew
Oliver, the newly appointed collector of the stamp taxes,
and Chief Justice Hutchinson. A scarecrow puppet, in-
tended to represent the obnoxious Oliver, was publicly
hung upon a tree by the mob, then cut down, triumphantly
paraded through the city to Oliver's door, and there set
on fire. When the sham Oliver was ashes the crowd broke
into and ransacked his house, after which it did the same
turn to the house of Chief Justice Hutchinson. Oliver
and Hutchinson escaped unhurt, but all their property
went through their broken windows and lay in ruin upon
the Boston streets.. Hutchinson was busy upon a History
of Massachusetts; the manuscript shared the fate of its

92 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvi.

author's chairs and tables, and went with them out into
the gutter. It was picked up, preserved, and exists to
this day, its pages blackened with the Boston mud. Many
jiapers and records of the province which Hutchinson had
in his care for the purpose of his history were irretrieva-
blv lost.

The next day the judges and the bar, assembled in their
robes at the Boston Court House, were startled by the
apparition of a haggard man in disordered attire, whom
they might have been pardoned for failing to recognize as
their familiar chief justice. In a voice broken with emotion
Hutchinson apologized to the court for the appearance in
which he presented himself before it. He and his family
were destitute ; he himself had no other shirt and no other
clothes than those he was at that moment wearing. Part
even of this poor attire he had been obliged to borrow.
Almost in rags, almost in tears, he solemnly called his
Maker to witness that he was innocent of the charges that
had made him obnoxious to the fury of the populace. He
swore that he never, either directly or indirectly, aided,
assisted, or supported, or in the least promoted or encour-
aged the Stamp Act, but on. the contrary did all in his
power, and strove as much as in him lay, to prevent it.
TJie court listened to him in melancholy silence and then
adjourned, " on account of the riotous disorders of the pre-
vious night and universal confusion of the town," to a
day nearly two months later.

It was a thankless privilege to be a stamp officer in those
stormy hours. Most of the stamp officers were forced to
resign under pressure which they might well be excused
for finding sufficiently cogent. In order to make the new
law a dead letter the colonists resolved that while it was
in force they would avoid using stamps by substituting
arbitration for any kind of legal procedure. With a
people in this temper, there were only two things to be
done; to meet their wishes, or to annihilate their opposi-
tion. It is possible that Grenville might have preferred
to attempt the second alternative, but by this time Gren-
vi lie's power was at an end.

1780-82. ROCKINGHAM AXD HIS MINISTRY. 93

CHAPTER XLVII.

EDMUND BURKE.

The friction between Grenville and the King was rap-
idly becoming unbearable to George, if not to his minister.
Georo^e was resolved to be rid of his intolerable tyrant at
the cost of almost any concession. He was now fully as
eager to welcome Pitt back to office as he had once been
hot to drive him out of it. Again Cumberland was called
in; again Cumberland approached Pitt; again Pitt's will-
ingness to resume the seals was overborne by the stubborn-
ness of Temple. The King was in despair. He would
not endure Grenville and Grenville's bullying sermons
any longer, and yet it was hard indeed to find any one who
could take Grenvi lie's place with any chance of carrying
on Grenville's work. Cumberland had a suggestion to
make, a desperate remedy for a desperate case. If Pitt
and the old Whigs were denied to the King, why should
not the King try the new Whigs and Rockingham?

The old Whig party, as it had lived and ruled so long,
had practically ceased to exist. So much the King had
accomplished. Saint George of Hanover had struck at
the dragon only to find that, like the monster in the classi-
cal fable, it took new form and fresh vitality beneath his
strokes. There was a Whig party that was not essentially
the party of Pitt, a party which was recruiting its ranks
with earnest, thoughtful, high-minded, honorable men to
whom the principles or want of principles which permitted
the old Whig dominion were as intolerable as they appear
to a statesman of to-day. At the head of this new develop-
ment of A\Tiig activity was the man to whom Cumberland
now turned in the hour of the King's trial, Charles Wat-
son Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham.

94 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvii.

Lord Rockingham was one of those ornaments of the
English senate for the benefit of whose biographers the
adjective amiable seems especially to have been invented.
Although the master of a large fortune, while he was still
a boy of twenty he was deservedly noted for the gravity
and stillness of his youth, and during a political career
of one-and-thirty years, if he showed neither commanding
eloquence nor commanding statesmanship, he did honor
to the Whig party by his sincere patriotism and irreproach-
able uprightness of character. If heaven had denied Rock-
ingham the resplendent gifts that immortalize a Chatham,
it had given him in full measure of the virtues of patri-
otism, honesty, integrity, and zeal. The purity of his life,
the probity of his actions, and the excellence of all his
public purposes, commended him to the affectionate re-
gard of all w^ho held that morality was more essential to
a statesman than eloquence, and that it was better to fail
with such a man than to succeed with those to whom, for
the most part, the successes of that day were given. Two
years before, in 1763, his dislike for the policy of Lord
Bute had driven him to resign his small office as Lord of
the Bedchamber, and he carried his scrupulousness so far
as to resign at the same time his Lord-Lieutenantcy of
Yorkshire.

To the delight of the Duke of Cumberland, and to the
delight of the King, Rockingham consented to form a
Ministry. With the best will in the world Rockingham
could not make his Ministry very commanding. It was
but a makeshift, and not a very brilliant makeshift, but
at least it served to get rid of Grenville and of Grenville's
harangues. So long as Grenville was unable to terrorize
the royal closet with reproaches and reproofs addressed to
the King, and with menaces aimed at Bute, George was
quite willing to see Newcastle intrusted with the Privy
Seal, and Conway made Secretary of State for one de-
partment, and the Duke of Grafton for the other. But
the Ministry which the King accepted because he could
get nothing better, and because he would have welcomed
something much worse so long as it delivered him from

1765. THE COMING OF EDMUND BURKE. 95

Grenville — the Ministry that provoked the derisive pity
of most of its critics was destined to attain an honorable
immortality. The heterogeneous group of men who called
themselves or were called, who believed themselves or
were believed to be Whigs, had obtained one recruit
whose name was yet to make the cause he served
illustrious. Lord Eockingham had many claims to the
regard of his contemporaries; undoubtedly his greatest
claim to the regard of posterity lies in the intelligence
which enabled him to discern the rising genius of a young
writer, and the wisdom which found a place by his side
and a seat in the House of Commons for Edmund Burke.

The history of a nation is often largely the history of
certain famous men. Great epochs, producing great lead-
ers, make those leaders essentially the expression of certain
phases of the thought of their age. The life of Walpole
is the life of the England of his time because he was so
intimately bound up with the great movement which
ended by setting Parliamentary government free from the
possible dominion of the sovereign. The life of Chatham,
the life of Pitt, the life of Fox, each in its turn is a sum-
mary of the history of England during the time in which
they helped to guide its destinies. But to some men, men
possessing in an exceptional degree the love for humanity
and the longing for progress, this power of representing
in their lives the sum and purpose of their age is markedly
characteristic. Just as Mirabeau, until he died, practically
represented the French Eevolution, so certain English
statesmen have from time to time been representative of
the best life, the best thought, the best purposes, desires,
and ambitions of the country for whose sake they played
their parts. Of no man can this theory be said to be more
happily true than of Edmund Burke.

It would scarcely be exaggeration to say that the history
of England during the middle third of the eighteenth
century is largely the history of the career of Edmund
Burke. From the moment when Burke entered upon po-
litical life to the close of his great career, his name was
associated with every event of importance, his voice raised

9G A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvii.

on one side or the other of every question that concerned
the welfare of the English people and the English Consti-
tution. As much as this, however, might be said of more
than one actor in the political history of the period cov-
ered by Burke's public life. But the influence which Burke
exercised upon his time, the force he brought to bear upon
his political generation, were a greater influence and a
stronger force than that directed by any other statesman
of the age. Whether for good or for evil, according to the
standards by which his critics may judge him, Burke
swayed the minds of masses of his countrymen to a degree
that was unequalled among his contemporaries. With the
two great events of the century — the revolt of the Ameri-
can colonies and the French Revolution — his name was
the most intimately associated, his influence the most
potent. With what in their degree must be called the
minor events of the reign — with the trial of Wilkes, with
the trial of Warren Hastings — he was no less intimately
associated, and in each case his association has been the
most important feature of the event. Where he was right
as where he was wrong, and whether he was right or
whether he was wrong, he was always the most interesting,
always the most commanding figure in the epoch-making
political controversies of his day. Grenville wrote of him
finely, many years after his death, that he was in the
political world what Shakespeare was in the moral world.
Burke entered political life, or entered active political
life, when he was returned to Parliament in the December
of 1765. Up to that time his life had been largely un-
eventful; much of it must be called as far as we are con-
cerned eventless, for of a great gap of his life, a gap of
no less than nine years, we know, if not absolutely nothing,
certainly next to nothing. It is not even quite certain
where or when he was born. The most approved account
is that he was born in Dublin on January 12, 1729, reck-
oning according to the new style. . The place of his birth
is still pointed out to the curious in Dublin: one of the
many modest houses that line the left bank of the Liffey.
His family was supposed to stem from Limerick, from

1729-59. BURKE'S EARLY LIFE. 97

namesakes who spelled their name differently as Bonrke.
His mother's family were Catholic ; Burke's mother always
remained stanch to her native faith, and, though Burke
and his brothers were brought up as the Protestant sons
of a Protestant father, the influence of his mother must
have counted for much in creating that tender and gener-
ous sympathy towards a proscribed creed which is one of
the noblest characteristics of Burke's career.

Burke's earliest and in a sense his best education was
received between his twelfth and fourteenth years, in the
school of a Yorkshire Quaker named Abraham Shackleton,
who kept a school at Ballitore. Burke used often to de-
clare in later years that he owed everything he had gained
in life to the teaching and the example of those two years
with Abraham Shackleton. The affectionate regard which
Burke felt for his schoolmaster, an affectionate regard
which endured until Shackleton's death, thirty years later,
in 1771, he felt also for his schoolmaster's son, Eichard
Shackleton. Most of what we know of Burke's life in
Trinity College from 1743 to 1748 we gather from his
letters to Richard Shackleton, letters of absorbing interest
to any student of the growth of a great mind. Less viva-
cious, less brilliant than the boyish letters of Goethe, they
resemble them in the eager thirst they display for knowl-
edge of all kinds, in their passionate enthusiasm for all
the rich varieties of human knowledge, in their restless
experiments in all directions. In those younger days Burke
thought himself, as every generous and ambitious youth
must needs think himself, a poet, and many verses were
forwarded to the faithful friend, to lighten the effect of
serious theological discussions and elaborate comparisons
of classical authors.

Dissensions with his father and a determination to study
for the bar sent Burke to England in the early part of
1750, and there for nine long years he practically disap-
pears from our knowledge. All we know is that he studied
law, but that, like many another law student, he gave more
time and thought to literature than to his legal studies;
that this action deepened the hostility of his father, who

VOL. ni. — 4

98 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvii.

reduced Burke's allowance to a pittance, and that his daily
need as well as his desire drove Burke to seek his livelihood
in letters.

He seems to have had a hard fight for it. The glimpses
we get of him during that period of youthful struggle
show him as an ardent student of books, but a no less
ardent student of life, not merely in the streets and clubs
and theatres of tlie great city, but in the seclusion of quiet
country villages and the highways and byways of rural
England. Romance has not failed to endeavor to illumi-
nate with her prismatic lantern the darkness of those nine
mysterious years. A vivid fancy has been pleased to pic-
ture Burke as one of the many lovers of the marvellous
^largaret Wothngton, as a competitor for the chair of
]\roral Philosophy at Glasgow, as a convert to the Catholic
faith, and, perhaps most remarkable of all these lively
legends, as a traveller in America. These are fictions.
The certain facts are that somewhere about 1756 he mar-
ried a ^liss Nugent, daughter of an Irish physician who
had settled in England. Miss Nugent was a Catholic, and
thus, for the second time, the Catholic religion was en-
deared to Burke by one of the closest of human relation-
ships. At about the same time as his marriage, Burke
made his first appearance as an author by the " Vindication
of Natural Society," a satire upon Bolingbroke which many
accepted as a genuine w^ork of Bolingbroke's, and by
the "Essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful,'' which
is perhaps most valuable because we owe to it in some de-
gree the later masterpiece of aesthetic criticism, the
''- Laocoon " of Lessing. From this time until his con-
nection wdth public life began his career was linked with
Fleet Street and its brotherhood of authors, and his pen
was steadily employed. With that love for variety of sub-
ject which is characteristic of most of the authors of the
eighteenth century, he handled a number of widely differ-
ing themes. He wrote " Hints for an Essay on the
Drama," a work which has scarcely held its place in the
library of the dramatist by the side of the " Paradoxe sur
le Comedien" of Diderot, or the " Hamburgische

1759. THE WORK OF EDMUND BURKE. 99

Dramaturgie " of Lessiug. He wrote an account of the
European settlements in America, still interesting as show-
ing the early and intimate connection of his thoughts with
the greatest of English colonies. He wrote an " Abridg-
ment of English History/^ which carries unfortunately
no farther than the reign of John a narrative that is not
unworthy of its author. He founded the " Annual Regis-
ter/^ and was in its pages for many years to come the his-
torian of contemporary Europe. Of all the many debts
that Englishmen owe to Burke, the conception and incep-
tion of the " Annual Register " must not be reckoned as
among the least important.

It was at this point in his career that Burke's connection
with public life began, not to end thenceforward until the
end of his own life. Single-speech Hamilton, so called
because out of a multitude of speeches he made one mag-
nificent speech, was attracted to Burke by the fame of the
'• Vindication of Xatural Society,'^ sought his acquaint-
ance, and when Hamilton went to Ireland as secretary to
Lord Halifax, Burke accompanied him. For two years
Burke remained with Hamilton in Ireland, studying the
Irish question of that day, with the closeness of the
acutest mind then at work and with the racial sympathy
of the native. Then he quarrelled, and rightly quarrelled,
with Hamilton, because Hamilton, to whom the aid of
Burke was infinitely precious, sought to bind Burke
foreyer to his service by a pension of three hundred a
year. Burke demanded some leisure for the literature
that had made his name. Hamilton justified Leland's
description of him as a selfish, canker-hearted, envious
reptile by refusing. Burke, who always spoke his mind
roundly, described Hamilton as an infamous scoundrel,
flung back his pension and returned to freedom, independ-
ence, and poverty. But he was soon to enter the service
of another statesman under less galling terms, under less
unreasonable conditions.

Burke's name was brought before Lord Rockingham,
probably by Burke's friend and namesake, though in all
likelihood not kinsman, William Burke. Lord Rocking-

100 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlvil

lunii appointed Burke his private secretary, and by the
simple integrity of his character bound Burke, to use his
own words, " by an inviolable attachment to him from that
time forward." But the alliance thus begun was threat-
ened in its birth. A mysterious hostility attributed by
Burke to " Hell-Kite " Hamilton brought certain charges
to the notice of the Duke of Newcastle. The Duke of New-
castle hurried to Lord Rockingham to warn him that his
newly appointed secretary was a disguised Jesuit, a dis-
guised Jacobite. Lord Rockingham immediately com-
municated these accusations to Burke, who repelled them
with a firmness and dignity which had the effect only of
confirming Lord Rockingham's admiration of Burke and
of drawing closer the friendship of the two men. Burke
was promptly brought into Parliament as member for
Wendover, and during the single year which Lord Rock-
ingham's Administration lasted its leader had every reason
to rejoice at the happy chance which had given to him
such a follower and such an ally.

Burke delivered his maiden speech in the House of
Commons on January 27, 1766, a few days after the open-
ing of the session, on the subject of the dissatisfaction in
the American colonies. His speech won the praise of the
Great Commoner; his succeeding speeches earned him en-
thusiastic commendation from friends and admirers out-
side and inside the House of Commons. The successful
man of letters had proved himself rapidly to be a success-
ful orator and a politician who would have to be reckoned
with.

It has been contended, and not unreasonably, that as
an orator Burke is not merely in the first rank, but that
he is himself the first, that he stands alone, without a
rival, without a peer, and that none of the orators of
antiquity can be said even to contest his unquestionable
supremacy. But it is in no sense necessary to Burke's
fame that the fame of others should be in any way im-
pugned or depreciated. It is sufficient praise to say that
Burke is one of the greatest orators the world has ever
held. To argue that he is superior to Demosthenes on the

1766. THE INFLUENCE OF BURKE'S CAREER. loi

one hand, or to Cicero on the other, is to maintain an argu-
ment very much on a par with that which it amused Burke
himself to maintain when he contended for the
superiority of the " Aeneid " over the " Iliad." It is quite
enough to be able to say well-nigh without fear of con-
tradiction that Burke is probably the greatest orator who
ever spoke in the English language.

Burke's political career began brilliantly in the cham-
pionship of freedom, in the defence of the oppressed, in
the defiance of injustice. He was made welcome to the
great political arena in which he was to fight so long and
so hard. His ability was recognized at once; he may be
said to have leaped into a fame that the passage of time
has not merely confirmed but increased. No author more
profoundly infiuenced the thought of his time; no author
of that time is likely to exercise a more enduring influence
upon succeeding generations. Of all the men of that
busy and brilliant age, Burke has advanced the most stead-
ily in the general knowledge and favor. While other men,
his rivals in eloquence, his peers in the opinions of his con-
temporaries, come year by year to be less used as influences
and appealed to as authorities, the wisdom of Burke is
more frequently drawn upon and more widely appreciated
than ever. The world sees now, even more clearly than the
world saw then, that whether Burke was right or wrong
in his conclusions as to any question, it had to be admitted
that the point of view from which he started to get at that
conclusion was the correct one.

102 A HISTORY OF TUE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlviii.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE STAMP ACT.

That the colonies were not well understood in England
was no fault of the colonists. There was at that time and
hour in England a man specially authorized to speak on
behalf of the colony of Pennsylvania, and indirectly en-
titled as he was admirably qualified to represent the other
colonies. At that time Benjamin Franklin was the most
distinguished American living and the most distinguished
American who had ever lived. It was not his first visit
to England. He had crossed the Atlantic forty years be-
fore when he was a youth of eighteen, eager to set up for
himself as a master printer, and anxious to obtain the ma-
terials for his trade in the old country. In those eighteen
3^ears he had learned many things. He had learned how
to print; he had learned how to bear poverty with courage
and ambition with patience; he could never remember a
time when he was unable to read, but he had learned how
to read with inexhaustible pleasure and unfailing profit,
and he had learned how to write. When he was seventeen
he had run away from his birthplace, Boston, and the home
of an ill-tempered brother, and made his way as best he
might to Philadelphia. As he tramped into the city with
a loaf under each arm for provender, a young woman lean-
ing in a doorway laughed at the singular figure. Six years
later she married Franklin, who in the interval had been
a journeyman printer in Philadelphia, a journeyman
printer in London, and had at last been able to set up for
himself in Philadelphia. From 1729 the story of Frank-
lin's life is the story of a steady and splendid advance in
popularity and wealth, and in the greater gifts of knowl-
edge, wisdom, and humanity. He published a newspaper,

1766. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 103

the Philadelphia Gazette; he disseminated frugality, thrift,
industry, and the cheerful virtues in " Poor Eichard's
Almanack;" he was the benefactor and the blessing of
the city of his adoption. He founded her famous library;
he devoted the results of his scientific studies to her com-
fort, welfare, and comeliness; he maintained her defences
as a military engineer, and was prepared to serve her gal-
lantly in the field against the Indians as a colonel of
Militia of his own raising. N^o man ever lived a fuller life
0]" did so many things with more indomitable zeal or more
honorable thoroughness. H.ie colony of Pennsylvania was
very proud of her illustrious citizen and delighted to do
him honor. ^Vhen he visited England for the second time,
in 1757, he was the Agent for the General Assembly of
Pennsylvania, he was Deputy Postmaster-General for the
British colonies, he was famous throughout the civilized
world for his discovery of the identity of lightning with
the electric fluid. He was in London for the third time
when Kockingham took office. He had lived nearly sixty
years of a crowded, memorable, admirable life; he was
loaded with laurels, ripe in the learning of books and the
learning of the book of the world. Even he whom few
things surprised or took unawares would have been sur-
prised if he could have been told that the life he had lived
was eventless, bloodless, purposeless in comparison with
the life he had yet to live, and that all he had done for his
country was but as dust in the balance when weighed
against the work he was yet to do for her. He was stand-
ing on the threshold of his new career in the year when
Edmund Burke entered Parliament.

The Kockingham Administration did its best to undo
the folly of Grenville's Government. After long debates
in both Houses, after examination of Franklin at the bar
of the Commons, after the strength and acumen of Mans-
field had been employed to sustain the prerogative against
the colonies and the voice of Burke had championed the
colonies against the prerogative, after Grenville had de-
fended himself with shrewdness and Pitt had added to
the splendor of his fame, the Stamp Act was formally re-

104 A HISTORY OF TIIP] FOUR GEORGES. ch. xltiii.

pealed. Unhappily, the new Ministry was only permitted
to do good by halves. The same session that repealed the
Stamp Act promulgated the Declaratory Act, asserting
the full power of the King, on the advice of Parliament,
to make laws binding the American colonies in all cases
whatsoever. This desperate attempt to assert what the
repeal of the Stamp Act virtually surrendered was intended
as a solace to the King and as a warning — perhaps a
friendly warning — to the colonies. Those who were most
opposed to it in England may well have hoped that it
might be accepted without too much straining in the
general satisfaction caused by the repeal of the hated
measure. Even Franklin seemed to believe that the De-
claratory Act would not cause much trouble in America.
The event denied the hope, and indignation at the Declara-
tory Act outlasted in America the rejoicing over the sub-
version of Grenville's policy. Nevertheless, the rejoicing
was very great. On May 16, 1766, the public spirit of
Boston was stimulated by the distribution of a broadsheet
headed " Glorious Ncws.^' This broadsheet announced
the arrival of John Hancock's brig " Harrison," in six
weeks and two days from London, with the important tid-
ings of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The broadsheet
painted a lively picture of the enthusiasm at Westminster
and the rejoicings in the City of London over the total
repeal of the measure. It told of the ships in the river
displaying all their colors, of illuminations and bonfires
in many parts; "in short, the rejoicings were as great as
was ever known on any occasion." This broadsheet,
^' printed for the benefit of the public," ended in a rapture
of delight. " It is impossible to express the joy the town
is now in, on receiving the above great, glorious, and im-
portant news. The bells on all the churches were immedi-
ately set a-ringing, and we hear the day for a general re-
joicing will be the beginning of next week." Boston
had every reason to rejoice, to ring its bells and fly its
flags, and set poor debtors free from prison in honor of
the occasion. The colonies had stood together against
the Home Government, and had learned something of

1766. ACTION OF THE COLONIAL GOVERNORS. 105

the strength of their union by the repeal of the Stamp
Act.

But when. the bells had stopped ringing and the flags
were hauled down and the released debtors had ceased to
congratulate themselves upon their newly recovered lib-
erty, Boston and the other colonial cities found that their
satisfaction was not untempered. The broadsheet that had
blazoned the repeal had also assured its readers that the
Acts of Trade relating to America would be taken under
consideration and all grievances removed. " The friends
to America are very powerful and disposed to assist us to
the best of their ability." The friends to America were
powerful, but they fought against tremendous odds. Dul-
ness and mediocrity, a spite that was always stupid, and
a stupidity that was often spiteful, an alliance of igno-
rance and arrogance were the forces against which they
struggled in vain. The Acts of Trade were to be enforced
as rigidly as ever. The Declaratory Act pompously as-
serted the unimpeachable prerogative of British Majesty
to make what laws it pleased for the colonies. The good
that had been done seemed small in comparison with the
harm that might yet be done, that in all probability would
1je done.

For the time more was to be feared from the viceroys
of the provinces than from the Home Government. Mr.
Secretary Conway addressed a circular letter to the govern-
ors of the ditferent colonies, reproving the colonists, in-
deed, for the recent disturbances, but with a measured
mildness of reproof that seemed carefully calculated not
to give needless offence or cause unnecessary irritation.
" If by lenient persuasive methods," Conway wrote, " you
can contribute to restore the peace and tranquillity to the
provinces on which their welfare and happiness depend,
you will do a most acceptable and essential service to your
country." An appeal so suave, advice so judicious, did
not seem the less prudent and humane because the Secre-
tary insisted upon the repression of violence and outrage
and reminded those to whom his letter was addressed that
if thev needed aid in the maintenance of law and order

106 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlviii.

tliey were to require it at tlie hands of the commanders of
his j\rajesty's hind and naval forces in America. If all
the gentlemen to whom the Secretary's circular was ad-
dressed had been as reasonable and as restrained in lan-
guage as its writer, things might even then have turned
out very differently. It was not to be expected, and the
colonists did not expect, that outrage and violence were to
go unchallenged and unpunished, and it is probable that
few even in Massachusetts w^ould have objected to the
formal expression of thanks for firmness and zeal w^hich
was made by Conway to the governor of that colony. But
the temperance that was possible to Conway was impossi-
ble to Bernard. Bernard was one of the worst of a long
line of inappropriate colonial governors. He was a hot-
headed, hot-hearted man who seemed to think that to play
the part of a domineering, blustering bully was to show
discretion and discernment in the duties of his office. He
always acted under the conviction that he must always be
in the right and every one else always in the wrong, and he
blazed up into fantastic rages at the slightest show of
opposition. As this was not the spirit in which to deal
with the proud and independent men of Massachusetts,
Governor Bernard passed the better part of his life in a
passion and w^as forever quarrelling with his provincial
legislature and forever complaining to the Home Govern-
ment of his hard lot and of the mischievous, mutinous set
of fellows he had to deal with.

When Bernard received the Secretary's letters and the
accompanying copies of the two Bills that had been passed
by the British Parliament, he hastened to make them
kno^\Ti to the Assembly of Massachusetts. But he made
them known in a speech that was wholly lacking in either
temperance or discretion. Had it been at once his desire
and his duty to inflame his hearers against himself and
the Government w^hich he represented he could hardly have
chosen words more admirably adapted for the purpose.
With a wholly unchastened arrogance and a wholly un-
governed truculence, the governor of the province lectured
or rather hectored the gentlemen of the Council and the

1766. END OF THE ROCKINGUAM ADMINISTRATION. IQV

gentlemen of the House of Representatives after a fashion
that would have seemed in questionable taste on the part
of an old-fashioned pedagogue to a parcel of unruly school-
boys. He was for bullying and blustering them into a
better behavior, and he assured those who were willing to
make amends and to promise to be good in the future that
their past offences would be buried in a charitable oblivion.
" Too ready a forgetfulness of injuries hath been said to
be my weakness," Bernard urged with strange igno-
rance. " However, it is a failing which I had rather suffer
by than be without."

The House of Eepresentatives replied to the reproofs of
their governor in an address that was remarkable for the
firmness with which it maintained its own position and
the irony with which it reviewed the governor's preten-
sions. To prove their independence of action, they delayed
the Act of Indemnity demanded by Secretary Conway for
several months, and then accompanied it with a general
pardon to all persons who had been concerned in the riots
provoked by the Stamp Act. Though this Act was prompt-
ly disallowed by the Home Government on the ground that
the power of pardon belonged exclusively to the Crown,
it took effect nevertheless, and added another to the griev-
ances of Bernard and of his backers in England.

The slowly widening breach between the American colo-
nies and the mother country might even yet have been
filled if it had been possible for the King to depend upon
the services and listen to the advice of ministers whose
good intentions and general good sense had the advantage
of being served and indirectly inspired by the genius of
Burke. But unhappily, the fortunes of the party with
whom he was allied were not long fated to be official fort-
unes. After a vear of honorable if somewhat colorless
existence, the Rockingham Administration came to an end.
There was no particular reason why it should come to an
end, but the King was weary of it. If it had not gravely
dissatisfied him, it had afforded him no grave satisfaction.
An Administration always seemed to George the Third like
a candle which he could illuminate or extinguish at his

108 A HISTORY OF THE FOUli GEORGES. ch. xlviii.

pleasure. So he blew out the Rockingham Administration
and turned to Pitt for a new one. In point of fact, an
Administration without Pitt was an impossibility. The
Duke of Grafton had resigned his place in the Rockingham
Ministry because he believed it hopeless to go on without
the adhesion of Pitt, and Pitt would not adhere to the
Rockingham Ministry. Now, with a free hand, he set to
work to form one of the most amazing Administrations
that an age which knew many strange Administrations
can boast of.

The malady which had for so long martyrized the great
statesman had afflicted him heavily of late. His eccentric-
ities had increased to such a degree that they could hardly
be called merely eccentricities. But though he suffered in
mind and in body he was ready and even eager to return
to power, so long as that power was absolute. By this
time he had quarrelled with Temple, who had so often
hindered him from resuming office, and who was now as
hostile to him as his brother, George Grenville, had ever
been. Temple, in consequence, found no place in the new
Administration. The Administration was especially de-
signed to please the King. A party had grown up in the
State which was known by the title of the King's friends.
The King's friends had no political creed, no political con-
victions, no desire, no ambition, and no purpose save to
please the King. What the King wanted said they would
say; what the King wanted done they would do; their
votes were unquestionably and unhesitatingly at the King's
command. They did not, indeed, act from an invincible
loyalty to the royal person. It was the royal purse that
ruled them. The King was the fountain of patronage;
wealth and honors flowed from him; and the wealth and
the honors welded the King's friends together into a har-
monious and formidable whole. The King's friends found
themselves well represented in a Ministry that was other-
wise as much a thing of shreds and patches as a harlequin's
coat. Pitt had tried to make a chemical combination, but
he only succeeded in making a mixture that might at any
time dissolve into its component parts. It was composed

1766. PITT AS EARL OF CHATHAM. 109

of men of all parties and all principles. The amiable Con-
way and the unamiable Grafton remained on from Kock-
ingham's Ministry. So did the Duke of Portland and
Lord Bessborough, so did Saunders and Keppel. Pitt did
not forget his own followers. He gave the Great Seal to
Lord Camden, who, as Justice Pratt, had liberated Wilkes
from unjustifiable arrest. He made Lord Shelburne one
of the Secretaries of State. The Chancellorship of the
Exchequer was given to a politician with a passion for
popularity that made him as steadfast as a weathercock,
Charles Townshend.

By this time Pitt was no longer the Great Commoner.
The House of Commons was to know him no more. Under
the title of Earl of Chatham he had entered the Upper
Plouse. Such an elevation did not mean then, as it came
later to mean, something little better than political ex-
tinction. But Pitt's elevation meant to him a loss of popu-
larity as immediate as it was unexpected. Though he was
no longer young, though he was racked in mind and body,
though he sorely needed the repose that he might hope to
find in the Tapper House, he was assailed with as much
fury of vituperation as if he had betrayed the State. A
country that was preparing to rejoice at his return to
power lashed itself into a fury of indignation at his ex-
altation to the peerage. In the twinkling of an eye men
who had been devoted yesterday to Pitt were prepared to
believe every evil of Chatham. His rule began in storm
and gloom, and gloomy and stormy it remained. The first
act of his Administration roused the fiercest controversy.
A bad harvest had raised the price of food almost to famine
height. Chatham took the bold step of laying an embargo
on the exportation of grain. The noise of the debates over
this act had hardly died away when Pitt's malady again
overmastered him, and once more he disappeared from
public life into mysterious melancholy silence and seclu-
sion. It was an unhappy hour for the country which de-
prived it of the services of Chatham and left the helm of
state in the hands of Charles Townshend.

Charles To^^^lshend was the erratic son of a singularly

110 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlviii.

erratic mother. The beautiful Audrey Harrison married
the third Marquis Townshend, bore him five children, and
then separated from him to carry her beauty, her insolence,
and her wit through an amazed and amused society. It
was one of her eccentricities to change her name Audrey
to Ethelfreda. Another was to fancy herself and to pro-
claim herself to be very much in love with the unhappy
Lord Kilmarnock. She attended the trial persistently,
waited under his windows, quarrelled with Selwyn for
daring to jest about the execution — no very happy theme
for wit — and was all for adopting a little boy whom some
of the officials of the Tower had palmed off upon her as
Kilmarnock's son. Walpole liked her, delighted in her
witty, stinging sayings. She was always entertaining,
always alarming, always ready to say or do anything that
came into her mind. She lived, a whimsical, spiteful,
sprightly oddity, to be eighty-seven years of age. Charles
Townshend was her second son, and Charles Townshend
was in many ways as whimsical as his mother. He had a
ready wit, a dexterity in epigram, an astonishing facility
of speech, and a very great appreciation of his own power
of turning friends or foes into ridicule. It is told of him
that once in his youth, when a student at Leyden, he
suffered from his readiness to jest at the expense of
another. At a merry supper party he plied one of the
guests, a seemingly unconscious, stolid Scotchman named
Johnstone, with sneers and sarcasms which the Scotchman
seemed to disregard or take in good part. On the next
morning, however, Townshend's victim, enlightened by
some friend as to the way in which he had been made a
butt of, became belligerent and sent Townshend a chal-
lenge. Various opinions have been expressed of Town-
shend's action in the matter. He has been applauded for
good sense. He has been reproached for cowardice. Cer-
tainly Townshend did not, would not fight his challenger.
It required a great deal of good sense to decline a duel in
those days, and Townshend did decline the duel. He
apologized to his slow-witted but stubborn-purposed op-
ponent with a profusion of apology which some of his

1766. PECULIAR CHARACTER OF CHARLES TOWNSHEXD. m

friends thought to be excessive. In these days we should
consider Townshend's refusal to fight a duel merely as an
unimportant proof of his common-sense, but in the last
century, in the society in which Townshend moved, and
on the Continent, such a refusal suggested the possession
of a degree of common-sense that was far from ordinary —
that was, indeed, extraordinary. Townshend's tact, wit, and
good spirits carried him through the scrape somehow. He
made the rounds of Leyden with his would-be adversary,
calling in turn upon each of his many friends, and obtain-
ing from each, in the presence of his companion, the assur-
ance that Townshend had never been known to speak of
Johnstone slightingly or discourteously behind his back.
The episode, trivial in itself, gains a kind of gravity by the
illustration it affords of Townshend^s character all through
Townshend's short career. The impossibility of restrain-
ing an incorrigible tongue, and the unreadiness to follow
out the course of action to which his words would seem
to have committed him, were the distinguishing marks of
Townshend^s political existence. No man, no party, nor
no friend could count on the unflinching services of Town-
shend. His conduct was as irresponsible as his eloquence
was dazzling. In his twenty years of public life he had but
one purpose — to please and to be praised ; and to gain those
ends he sacriiiced consistency and discretion with a light
heart. The beauty of his person and the fluent splendor
of his speech went far towards the attainment of an ambi-
tion which was always frustrated by a fatal levity. In the
fine phrase of Burke, he was a candidate for contradictory
honors, and his great aim was to make those agree in ad-
miration of him who never agreed in anything else.

It has been given to few men to desire fame more
ardently, and to attain it more disastrously, than Charles
Townshend. If we may estimate the man by the praises
of his greatest contemporary, no one better deserved a
fairer fortune than fate allotted to him. Burke spoke of
Townshend as the delight and ornament of the House of
Commons, and the charm of every private society which
he honored with his presence. Though his passion for

112 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlviii.

fame might be immoderate, it was at least a passion which
is the instinct of all great souls. While Burke could rhap-
sodize over Townshend's pointed and finished wit, his re-
fined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment, his skill and
power in statement, his excellence in luminous explana-
tion, Walpole was no less enthusiastic in an estimate that
contrasted Townshend with Burke. According to Walpole,
Townshend, who studied nothing with accuracy or atten-
tion, had parts that embraced all knowledge with such
quickness that he seemed to create knowledge instead of
seeking for it. Eeady as Walpole admits Burke's wit to
have been, lie declares that it appeared artificial when set
b}' that of Townshend, which was so abundant in him
that it seemed a loss of time to think. Townshend's ut-
terances had always the fascinating effervescence of spon-
taneity, while even Burke's extempore utterances were so
pointed and artfully arranged that they wore the appear-
ance of study and preparation. This brilliant, resplendent
creature, in every respect the opposite to George Grenville,
showv where Grrenville was solid, fluent where he was
formal, glittering and even glowing where he was sober
or sombre, fascinating where he was repellent, gracious
where he was sullen, and polished where he was rude, was
nevertheless destined to share Grenville's hateful task and
Grenville's deserved condemnation. Such enthusiasm as
Parliament had permitted itself to show over the repeal
of Grenville's Stamp Act had long flickered out. The
colonists were regarded with more disfavor than ever by
a majority that raged against their ingratitude and bitterly
repented the repeal of the Act. Townshend's passion for
popularity forced him into the fatal blunder of his life. He
was indeed, as Burke said, the spoiled child of the House
of Commons, never thinking, acting, or speaking but with
a view to its judgment, and adapting himself daily to its
disposition, and adjusting himself before it as before a
looking-glass. The looking-glass showed him a member
of a Ministry that was unpopular because it refused to tax
America. He resolved that the looking-glass should
show him a member of a Ministry popular be-

1766. DEATH OF TOWNSHEND. 113

cause it was resolved to tax America. His hunger
and thirst after popularity, his passion for fame,
were leading him into strange ways indeed. He was
to leave after him an enduring name, but enduring for
reasons that would have broken his bright spirit if he could
have realized them. The shameful folly of George Gren-
ville was the shameful folly of Charles Townshend. His
name stands above Grenville^s in the roll of those who in
that disastrous time did so much to lower the honor and
lessen the empire of England. It became plain to Town-
shend that the Parliamentary majority regretted the repeal
of the Stamp Act and resented the theory that America
should not be taxed. Townshend resolved that revenue
could and should be raised out of America. He intro-
duced a Bill imposing a tax on glass, paper, and tea upon
the American colonies. Though the amount to be raised
was not large, no more than forty thousand pounds, and
though it was proposed that the whole of the sum should
be spent in America, it was as mischievous in its result
as if it had been more malevolently aimed. Townshend
himself did not live long enough to learn the unhappy con-
sequences of his folly. A neglected fever proved fatal to
him in the September of 1767, in the forty- third year of
his age. Walpole lamented him with an ironical appre-
ciation. ^' Charles Townshend is dead. All those parts
and fire are extinguished ; those volatile salts are evapo-
rated; that first eloquence of the world is dumb; that du-
plicity is fixed, that cowardice terminated heroically. He
joked on death as naturally as he used to do on the living,
and not with the afCectation of philosophers who wind up
their works with sayings which they hope to have remem-
bered." Townshend had passed away, but his policy re-
mained, a fatal legacy to the country.

Townshend was immediatelv succeeded in the Chan-
cellorship of the Exchequer by a young politician who had
been for some years in Parliament and had held several
offices without conspicuously distinguishing himself. WTien
Lord North entered the House of Commons as member
for Banbury, his record was that of any intelligent young

114 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlviii.

nobleman of his time. He had written pleasing Latin
love jjoems at Eton, he had been to Oxford, he had studied
at Leipzig. George Grenville saw great promise in North.
He even predicted that if he did not relax in his political
pursuits he was very likely to become Prime Minister. Un-
happily for his country, North did not relax in his polit-
ical pursuits. There was an ironic fitness in the fact that
North should be admired by Grenville and should succeed
to Townshend, for no man was better fitted to carry on the
fatal policy of the two men who had outraged the Ameri-
can colonies by the Stamp Act and the tax on tea.

1161. THE RETURN OF WILKES. 115

CHAPTER XLIX.

WILKES EEDIVIVUS.

While the King's Government was preparing for itself
an infinity of trouble a])road, it was not destined to find
itself idle for want of trouble at home. Great and grave
trouble came upon the King and his friends suddenly, and
out of a quarter from which they least expected it. If
they were confident of anything, they were confident that
they had dealt the final blow to the audacious demagogue
who for a time had fluttered the town with the insolences
of the North Briton. The North Briton had ceased to
exist. Of the two men whose bitter genius had been its
breath, Churchill was dead, and Wilkes himself, a fugitive
and a beggar, drifting from one European capital to
another, seemed as little to be feared as if he slept by
ChurchilFs side. The visit of the Commander's statue to
Don Juan seemed scarcely more out of the course of nat-
ure to Don Juan's lackey than the reappearance in active
public life of Wilkes appeared to the King's friends, for
whom Wilkes had ceased to exist.

Wilkes had wearied of Continental life. His affection
for his own country was so earnest and so sincere that, in
a letter to the Duke of Grafton, he declared his willing-
ness to bury himself in the obscurity of private life, if he
were permitted to return unmolested to England. The
appeal failed to extract a satisfactory reply. The Minis-
ters would make no terms with their ruined foeman.
Wilkes then resolved to show that he was not so helpless
as his enemies appeared to think him. He published in
1767, in London, a pamphlet, in which he stated his case
with indignation, but not without dignity. When the
pamphlet had obtained a wide circulation, Wilkes followed

116 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlix.

it up l)}^ appearing himself in London in the February of
1768, at the moment of the general election, and announc-
ing himself as a candidate for Parliament for the City of
London. The audacity of this step amazed his enemies
and delighted his friends. If it had been taken a little
earlier it might have won him the seat. So calm and so
wise an observer as Franklin, at least, thought that it
would have done so. As it was, though Wilkes came late
into the field, and was placed at the bottom of the poll,
he secured more than twelve hundred votes, and did, in the
conventional phrase too often used to soothe defeat, gain
a great moral victory.

The courage of the outlaw had more than revived all
the old enthusiasm for him. We know on the authority
of Burke that the acclamations of joy with which he was
welcomed by the populace were inconceivable, and that the
marks of public favor which he received were by no means
confined to the lower order of the people. Several mer-
chants and other gentlemen of large property and of con-
siderable interest openly espoused his cause, and a sub-
scription was immediately opened in the City for the pay-
ment of his debts. We know on other authority that in
an age when betting was the mode the extraordinary bet-
ting as to Wilkes's success in his desperate enterprise was
actually organized by a certain number of brokers into
stock which was quoted on 'Change. Burke ascribes the
reason for the failure to the open voting. The electors
were obliged, he said, to record their names, and the con-
sequences of an opposition to great corporate and commer-
cial connections were too obvious not to be understood.

As soon as Wilkes knew of his defeat in the City, he
struck a vet bolder note for success. He came forward at
once as a candidate for the County of Middlesex in opposi-
tion to the established interest of two gentlemen who had
represented it for several years, who were supported by the
whole interest of the Court and who had considerable for-
tunes and great connections in it. But Wilkes, too, had
powerful abettors. The Duke of Portland was one of his
most prominent supporters. His old friend Temple sup-

1768. WILKES AS MEMBER FOR MIDDLESEX. 117

plied the freehold qualification which was then essential
for a Parliamentary candidate. Home, the Rector of Brent-
ford, where the election took place, gave all his great influ-
ence and all his srifts to the service of Wilkes with the
same devotion that had formerly animated Churchill.
Home was not altogether an admirable character, and his
enthusiasm for Wilkes had hitherto awakened no corre-
sponding enthusiasm on Wilkes's part. But Home was
invaluable at a crisis like the Middlesex election. He had
the eloquence of a sophist; he had the strategy of a tac-
tician; he was endowed with an unconquerable energy,
an indomitable determination. He was exceedingly popular
in his parish; he caught the mood of the popular party,
and he happened to be on the right side. It would be
difficult to exaggerate the importance of the services he
rendered to Wilkes and to the cause of which Wilkes was
the figurehead by his work in the i\[iddlesex election.
The zeal of Home, the friendship of Temple, the daring
of Wilkes carried the day. It was no ordinary victory.
It was an astonishing triumph. As Burke pointed out.
the same causes did not operate upon the freeholders at
large which had prevented the inclinations of the livery
of London from taking effect in Wilkes's favor, and the
result of the polling on March 28 w^as that Wilkes was
returned to Parliament by a prodigious majority. Wilkes
polled 1290 votes. Mr. George Cooke, the Tory candi-
date, who had been the representative for eighteen years,
only scored 827, and Sir W. Beauchamp Procter, the Whig
candidate, only got 807 votes.

There was great excitement in London when the result
of the election was known. It pleased the popular voice
to insist that every window should be illuminated in honor
of Wilkes's triumph, and all windows that were not lit up
were unhesitatingly broken. Those persons who were
known to be Wilkes's principal opponents received the
special attentions of the mob. Lord Bute's house had to
stand a siege; so had the house of Lord Egremont, w^ho
had signed the warrant for Wilkes's committal; so had
other houses which were either known to belong to the

118 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlix.

opponents of the hero or showed themselves to be such
by their darkened windows. All such windows were in-
stantly broken, to the joy of the glaziers, who declared
that a Middlesex election was worth any number of Indian
victories. The mob had it all its own way, for the strength
of the constabulary had been drafted off to Brentford in
expectation of rioting there which never took place. But
the mob did not abuse its triumph. It was in its playful,
not its dangerous mood. It stopped the carriages of the
gentry, made the occupants cheer for Wilkes and Liberty,
scrawled the number Forty-five upon the polished panels,
broke the glasses, but in the main let the carriage-owners
go unmolested. The Duke of Northumberland was forced
to toast the popular favorite in a mug of ale. One ludi-
crous occurrence very nearly became an international epi-
sode. The Austrian Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt, famed
for his stateliness, for his punctiliousness in ceremonial,
fell a victim to popular misapprehension. The mob that
surrounded his coach took him, unhappily, for a Scotch-
man, either because of his stiffness of demeanor or because
they could not understand what he was saying. To be
thought Scotch was a bad thing for any man in the hands
of a mob that howled for Wilkes, that howled against Bute.
The Austrian Ambassador was dragged from his carriage
and held uplifted in sufficiently uncomfortable fashion
while the magic number Forty-five was chalked upon the
soles of his shoes. He was no further hurt ; if he had been
a more prudent man he would have grinned at the mis-
chance and said no more about it. But he chose to con-
sider his dignity and the dignity of his empire affronted by
the follies of a crowd. He lodged a formal complaint
with the English Government. The English Government
could do nothing more than express regret with such
gravity as it could muster. As for the irreverent rogues
who had laid their hands upon the feet of the representa-
tive of a friendly State, it was not in the power of the
Government to punish them. The earth has bubbles as
the water has, and they were of them.

For two days the towTi was practically at the mercy of

1768. WILKES IX PRISON. 119

the Wilkite mob. The trainbands were called out by the
Mayor, who was an ardent courtier, but the men of the
trainbands were, for the most part, no less ardent Wilkites.
They lent their drums to swell the noise of Wilkes's tri-
umph; they could not be counted on to lend their muskets
to the suppression of Wilkes's partisans. Even the regular
troops were not, it was thought, to be relied upon in the
emergency. It was said here that certain regimental drum-
mers had beaten their drums for Wilkes; it was said there
that soldiers had been heard to declare that they would
never fire upon the people.

The fury of the Ministry, and especially the fury of the
King, flamed high. The King's heat was increased by a
letter which Wilkes had addressed directly to him on his
return to England. In this letter Wilkes made a not un-
dignified appeal for the King's mercy and clemency, com-
plained of the wicked and deceitful acts of revenge of the
late Ministry, and assured the sovereign of his zeal and
attachment to his service. To this letter, naturally, no
direct reply was made. The form that the King's answer
took was to insist that all the strength of the Government
must be used against Wilkes in order that he should be
driven from that Parliament to which the electors of Mid-
dlesex had dared to return him.

In the mean time the force of the law was slowly exerted
against Wilkes. Wilkes had promised that on the first
day of the term following his arrival in England he would
present himself at the Court of King's Bench. He kept
his promise and surrendered himself on April 20. The
judges of the King's Bench seem to have been paralyzed
by the position. It took them a whole week to decide that
they would refuse Wilkes bail — a whole week, every day,
every hour of which served to make Wilkes's cause better
known and Wilkes himself more popular. Wilkes went to
prison under the most extraordinary circumstances. His
journey from Westminster to Bishopsgate was more like
a royal progress than the passage of a criminal and an out-
law. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Wilkes
was able to detach himself from the zeal of the populace

120 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xux.

and get quietly into his prison. The prison immediately
became an object of greater interest than a royal palace.
Every day it was surrounded by a dense crowd that con-
sidered itself rewarded for hours of patient waiting if it
could but get a glimpse of the prisoner's face at a window.
All this show of enthusiasm exasperated the ministers and
drove them into the very acts that were best calculated to
keep the enthusiasm alive. On the day of the opening of
Parliament, May 10, the Government, under the pretence
of fearing riot, sent down a detachment of soldiers to guard
the King's Bench Prison, in St. George's Fields. This
was in itself a rash step enough, but every circumstance
attending it only served to make it more rash. As if de-
liberately to aggravate the popular feeling, the regiment
chosen for this pretence of keeping the peace was a Scotch
regiment. At a moment when everything Scotch was in-
sanely disliked in London such a choice was not likely to
insure good temper either on the part of the mob or on
the part of the military. That good temper was not in-
tended or desired was made plain by a letter written by
Lord Weymouth, the Secretary of State, to the local magis-
trate, urging him to make use of the soldiers in any case
of riot.

What followed was only what might have been expect-
ed. The crowd, irritated by the non-appearance of Wilkes,
still more irritated by the presence of the soldiery, threat-
ened, or was thought to threaten, an attack upon the
prison. Angry words were followed by blows; the brawl
between the mob and the military became a serious con-
flict. A young man named Allan, who seems to have had
nothing to do with the scuffle, was killed in a private house
by some of the soldiers who had forced an entrance in
pursuit of one of their assailants. Then the Eiot Act
was read ; the troops fired ; half a dozen of the rioters were
killed, including one woman, and several others were
wounded.

News of this bad business intensified the angry feeling
against the Government. A Scotch soldier, Donald Mac-
lean, was put on his trial for the murder of Allan. His

1768. THE MINISTRY ON ITS DEFENCE. 121

acquittal caused an indignation which deepened when the
colonel of the regiment presented him with thirty guineas
on behalf of the Government. This was taken as an ex-
ample of the determination of the Crown to silence the
voice of the people with the weapons of Scotch mercenaries.
Pamphlets, speeches, sermons, all were employed to stimu-
late the general agitation and to brand with atrocity the
conduct of the Ministrv. The tombstone erected over the
murdered man Allan chronicled his inhuman murder " by
Scottish detachments from the Army," and quoted from
Proverbs the words, " Take away the wicked from before
the King."

The ministers, on their side, were not slow to defend
themselves. Burke, with his usual fairness, has stated
their case for them when he tells how they painted in the
strongest colors the licentiousness of the rabble and that
contempt of all government which makes it necessary to
oppose to a violent distemper remedies not less violent.
This is, of course, the excuse of every overbearing authority,
which, having aroused irritation by its own mismanage-
ment, can conceive of no better way of allaying that irrita-
tion than the bayonet and the bullet. The Ministry and
the advocates of the Ministry maintained that the un-
happy disposition of the people was such that juries under
the influence of the general infatuation could hardly be
got to do justice to soldiers under prosecution, unless
Grovernment interposed in the most effectual manner for
the protection of those who had acted under their orders.
They further urged that, in view of the danger of the
insolence of the populace becoming contagious with the
very soldier}^, it was necessary for them to keep those
servants firm to their dutv bv new and unusual rewards.
" Whatever weight," says Burke, dryly, " might have been
in these reasons, they were but little prevalent, and the
Ministry became by this affair and its concomitant circum-
stances still more unpopular than by almost any other
event." But it must in fairness be admitted that, foolish,
stubborn, and even brutal as the King's ministers showed
themselves to be, their position was a very difficult one.

122 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlix.

It was well open to the Government to urge, and to urge
with truth, the peculiar lawlessness of the hour. It is an
effective example of the ineffectiveness of a mere policy
of coercion that, at a time when the penal laws of Great
Britain were ferocious to a degree that would have dis-
graced Dahomey, the laws were so frequently defied, and
defied with impunity. The laws might be merciless, even
murderous, but the Executive had not always the power to
compel respect or to enforce obedience. Among the lower
classes in the great city, and not merely that portion of the
lower classes who are qualified by the appellation of the
dangerous classes, but in strata where at least a moderate
degree of civilization might be hoped for, an amount of
savagery, of lawlessness, and of cruelty prevailed that
would have not ill become the pirates of the Spanish Seas
or the most brutal of Calabrian brigands. The hideous
institution of the pillory stimulated and fostered all the
worst instincts of a mob to whose better instincts no decent
system of education sought to appeal. Ignorance, and
poverty, and dirt brooded over the bulk of the poorer popu-
lation, to breed their inevitable consequences. Murder was
alarmingly common. Eiots that almost reached the propor-
tions of petty civil wars were liable to arise at any moment
between one section of the poorer citizens and another.
The horrors of the Brownrigg case show to what extent
lust of cruelty could go. The large disbandments that
are the inevitable consequence of peace after a long war
had thrown out of employment, and thrown upon the coun-
try, no small number of needy, unscrupulous, and desper-
ate men, only too ready to lend a hand to any disturbance
that might afford a chance of food and drink and plunder.

Mob law ruled in London to an extraordinary degree
during the whole of the eighteenth century. It reached a
high pitch, but not its highest pitch, at the time when the
watchword was Wilkes and Liberty. London was to wit-
ness bitterer work, bloodier work than anything which fol-
lowed upon the Middlesex election and the imprisonment
of the popular hero. But for the time the audacity of the
mob seemed to have gone its farthest. The temper of the

1752. MOB VIOLE^X'E IN DONDON. 123

mob was insolent, its insolence was brutal. It hated all
foreigners — and among foreigners it now included Scotch-
men— and it manifested its hatred in vituperation, and
when it dared in violence. A white man would hardly
be in more danger in a mid- African village than a foreigner
was in the streets of London. There is a contemporary ac-
count written by a French gentleman who travelled in
England, and who published his observations on what he
saw in England, which gives a piteous account of the bar-
barous incivility to which he, his friends, and his servants
were exposed when they walked abroad. The mob that
jeered and insulted the master very nearly killed the
servant for the single offence of being a Frenchman. But
the brutalities of the mob were not limited to strangers.
The citizens of London fared almost as badly if not quite
as badly as any Frenchman could do. Fielding gives a
picture in one of his essays of the lawless arrogance which
was characteristic of the rabble. He gave to the mob the
title of the Fourth Estate in an article in the Covent Garden
Journal for June 13, 1752, and in another article a week
later he painted an ironical picture of the brutal manners
and overbearing demeanor of the mob. " A gentleman,"
he wrote, "may go a voyage at sea with little more, hazard
than he can travel ten miles from the metropolis." On
the river, on the streets, on the highways, according to
Fielding, mob manners prevailed, and brutal language
might at any moment be followed by brutal actions. When
the largest allowance is made for the exaggeration of the
satirist, enough remains to show that the condition of
London in the second half of the eighteenth century was
disorderly in the extreme. People who ventured on the
Thames were liable to the foulest insults, and even to be
run down by those who were pleased to regard the stream
as their appanage, and who resented the appearance on it
of any who seemed better dressed than themselves. Women
of fashion were liable to be hustled, mobbed, insulted if
they ventured in St. James's Park on a Sunday evening.
No one could walk the streets by day without the prob-
ability of being annoyed, or by night without the risk of

124 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlix.

being knocked down. After painting his grim picture in
the Hogarth manner, Fielding concluded grimly that he
must observe " that there are two sorts of persons of
whom this fourth estate do yet stand in some awe, and
whom, consequently, they have in great abhorrence: these
are a justice of the peace and a soldier. To these two it
is entirely owing that they have not long since rooted all
the other orders out of the commonwealth.^'

The Government hoped that the longer Wilkes lay in
prison, the more chance there was that the enthusiasm
for him would abate. But in this hope the Government
were disappointed. Even in the ranks of the ministers
the King was not able to find unswerving agreement to his
demands for Wilkes's expulsion from Parliament. Out-
side Parliament the agitation was not only undiminished,
but was even on the increase. This was shown conclusively
by a fresh event in connection with Middlesex. Cooke,
who was the colleague of Wilkes in the representation of
the county, died. Serjeant Glynn, who had made himself
conspicuous as the champion of Wilkes and the advocate
of the popular cause, came forward to contest the vacant
seat, and carried the constituency in spite of the most deter-
mined efforts on the part of the royal faction to defeat
him. There were more riots, more deaths on the popular
side, more trials, more convictions for murder and more
pardons of the condemned men. The agitation which had
been burning at a steady heat blazed up into a flame.
Wilkes made every use of the opportunity. He had suc-
ceeded in getting a copy of the letter which Lord Wey-
mouth had sent to the magistrates, the letter in which Lord
Weymouth had practically urged the magistrates to fire
upon the people. Wilkes immediately sent it to the St.
James's Chronicle, a tri-weekly independent Whig jour-
nal which had been started in 1760. The >S'^. James's
Chronicle printed the letter, and Wilkes's own letter ac-
companying it, in which he accused the Ministry of having
planned and determined upon the " horrid massacre of St.
George's Fields." The letter, said Wilkes, " shows how
long a hellish project can be brooded over by some infernal

1769. WILKES'S EXPULSION FROM THE COMMONS. 125

spirits without one moment's remorse." It may be ad-
mitted that if the language of Wilkes's enemies in the
two Houses was strong even to ruffianism, Wilkes could
and did give them as good as he got in the way of invective
and vituperation.

The Government, goaded into fury by this daring provo-
cation, resolved to make an example of the offender. Lord
Barrington brought the letter formally before the House
of Commons. The House of Commons immediately voted
it a libel, and summoned Wilkes from his prison to the
bar of the House. On February 3, 1769, Wilkes appeared
before the Commons. With perfect composure he admit-
ted the authorship of the letter to the St. James's Chronicle,
and, with an audacity that exasperated the House, he pro-
claimed his regret that he had not expressed himself upon
the subject in stronger terms, and added that he should
certainly do so whenever a similar occasion should present
itself. " Whenever," he said, " a Secretary of State shall
dare to write so bloody a scroll, I will through life dare
to write such prefatory remarks, as well as to make
my appeal to the nation on the occasion." Wilkes found
champions in the House of Commons. Burke, Beekford,
and many others either defended Wilkes or urged that the
matter was not for the House of Commons, but for the law
courts to deal with. In the division the Government was
triumphant by a majority of 219 against 137, and Wilkes
was formally expelled from the House of Commons on the
ground, not merely of his comments on the letter of Lord
Weymouth, but on account of the ISTumber Forty-five of the
North Briton and the " Essav on Woman."

A new writ was issued for the county of Middlesex.
The county of Middlesex promptly re-elected Wilkes with-
out opposition on February 16. On February 17 the House
of Commons again voted the expulsion of Wilkes. This
time the House of Commons exceeded its powers and its
privileges in adding that the expelled man was incapable
of sitting in the existing Parliament. Every blow that the
royal party had struck at Wilkes had only aroused stronger
sympathy for him ; and this illegal act, this usurpation

126 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. xlix.

by one House of powers that only belonged to Parliament,
caused the liveliest indignation. It was resolved by the
friends of Wilkes, and by all who were the friends of the
principles with which Wilkes had come to be identified, to
fight to the utmost in defence of their constitutional rights,
that were now so gravely, so wantonly jeopardized. On
March 16 there was a new polling at Brentford, and, as
before, Wilkes was returned unopposed. There was, in-
deed, an effort made by an obscure merchant named Ding-
ley to oppose him, but he could find no freeholder to
second him, and he was chivied ignominiously from
the scene of the election. On March 17 the House of
Commons, for the third time, played what Burke called the
tragi-comedy of declaring the election void. A new writ
was again issued, and this time the Ministry were resolved
that, come what come might, Wilkes should have an op-
ponent. It was not the easiest of tasks to find a man
willing to oppose Wilkes's candidature on the hustings at
Brentford. Dingley, the merchant, had experienced the
violence of the mob; it was confidently assumed that any
other antagonist would fare very much worse. But the
Ministry found their champion in a young officer. Colonel
Luttrell, of the Guards, a son of Lord Irnham. Luttrell
was a gallant young soldier, a man of that temper which
regards all popular agitations with supreme disdain, and
of that courage that would face any danger, not merely
with composure, but with pleasure. His friends were so
apprehensive that he was going to his death that his life
was insured, and the gentlemen of the clubs, who were al-
ways willing to bet upon any imaginable contingency,
betted freely on his chances of surviving his adventure.
Wilkes's friends, however, were resolved to disappoint the
expectations of their enemies. Thanks to their energy
and patience, the election went off with perfect order.
Wilkes was, of course, returned at the top of the poll by
an enormous majority. Luttrell came next with less than
a quarter of his votes, and an absurd attorney, who had
thrust himself into the election at the last moment, came
last with a ludicrous poll of five votes.

1769. LORD NORTH AND THE WILKES CASE. 127

On Thursday, April 13, Wilkes was elected. London
was again illuminated, and a great demonstration outside
the King's Bench Prison congratulated the hero of the
hour on his third triumph. On the following day the
House of Commons prepared again to reject Wilkes. The
debate lasted over the Saturday — a rare event in those
days — and in the early daw^ning of Sunday morning
Colonel Luttrell was declared to be duly elected as the
member for Middlesex. The ministerial victory was not a
very great victory. They had only a majority of 197 votes
to 143. It served their turn at a pinch, but it was not a
big enough majority to inspire Lord North with the
courage to resist a proposal that a fortnight should be al-
lowed to the electors of Middlesex in which, if they wished,
to petition against conduct which practically deprived them
of their constitutional rights.

Lord North had many years of public life before him,
many years of slumbering and blundering on the treasury
bench, before his death in 1792, as Lord Guildford, in a
melancholy, premature old age. In those years he was
privileged to do a vast amount of injury to his country,
uncompensated for by any act to her advantage. Lord
North's conduct in the case of Wilkes was not the most
foolish act in a career of folly, but it certainly served as an
illuminating preface to a chronicle of wasted time. No
proofs of the wit that endeared him to his contemporaries
have been preserved ; his fame for an unalterable urbanity
is but an empty memory; his record is only rescued from
oblivion by the series of incredible follies which began
with the unjust attempt to annihilate Wilkes.

128 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. l.

CHAPTER L.

THE SPIRIT OF JUNIUS.

While all this was going on a new force suddenly made
itself felt in English political life. The King and his
ministers found themselves attacked by a mysterious and
dangerous opponent. On March 21, 1769, a letter was ad-
dressed to the Public Advertiser, signed " Junius," which
marked the beginning of a new era in political literature.
At that time the Puhlic Advertiser was the most important
paper in London. It had first appeared under that name
in 1752, but it was the direct descendant, through a series
of changes of name, of the Daily Post, which Defoe had
helped to start in 1719. It had its rivals in the Daily Ad-
vertiser, which was founded in 1724, and the Gazetteer
and New Daily Advertiser, which was started in 1728. In
the course of time both these journals had sunk to be little
more than advertising sheets. They gave hardly any news,
and they had no political influence. The Public Advertiser
was a much more important paper. It gave abundance of
foreign and domestic intelligence, it had original con-
tributions in prose and verse, and its columns were always
open to letters from correspondents of all kinds on all
manner of subjects.

It was not until the first letter signed with the signature
of Junius appeared that the paper assumed a serious po-
litical imj^ortance. The writer, whoever he was, who chose
that signature had written before in the columns of the
Public Advertiser. In 1767 Woodfall, the publisher, re-
ceived the first letter from the correspondent who was to
become so famous, and from time to time other letters
came signed by various names taken from classical no-
menclature, such as Mnemon, Atticus, Lucius, Brutus,

1769. THE LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 129

Domitian, Vindex, and;, perhaps, Poplicola. But it was with
the adoption of the name of Junius that the real impor-
tance of the letters began. They came at a crisis; they
spoke for the popular side; they spoke with a bitterness
and a ferocity that had hitherto not been attempted in
political journalism. The great French writer Taine has
said that the letters of Junius, at a time of national irrita-
tion and anxiety, fell one by one like drops of fire on the
fevered limbs of the body politic. He goes on to say
that if Junius made his phrases concise, and selected his
epithets, it was not from a love of style, but in order the
better to stamp his insult. Oratorical artifices in his hand
became instruments of torture, and when he filed his
periods it was to drive the knife deeper and surer, with an
audacity of denunciation and sternness of animosity, with
a corrosive and burning irony applied to the most secret
corners of private life, with an inexorable persistence of
calculated and meditated persecution.

The first few letters of Junius were devoted to an alterca-
tion with Sir William Draper over the character in the
first place of Lord Granby and in the second place of Lord
Granby's defender, Sir William Draper. Sir William,
though he fought stoutly for his friend and stoutly for
himself, did neither himself nor his friend much good by
engaging in the controversy. He was no match for the
weapons of Junius. He had neither the wit nor the venom
of his antagonist. But the great interest of the letters
began when Junius, taking up the cause of Wilkes, struck
at higher game than Sir William Draper or Lord Granby.
His first letter to the Duke of Grafton was an indictment
of the Duke for the conduct of the Crown in the case of a
murder trial arising out of the Brentford election. A
young man named George Clarke had been killed in a riot
and a man named Edward M'Quirk was tried and found
guilty of the murder. A kind of hugger-mugger inquest
produced a declaration that Clarke's death was not caused
by the blow he had received from his assailant, and in
consequence, " whereas a doubt had arisen in our royal
breast," the King formally pardoned the murderer by royal

VOL. III. — 5 ■

130 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. l.

proclamation. On this theme Junius lashed Grafton and
concluded his letter with a direct allusion to Wilkes. He
asked if Grafton had forgotten, while he was withdrawing
this desperate wretch from that justice which the laws had
awarded and which the whole people of England de-
manded, that there was another man, the favorite of his
country, whose pardon would have been accepted with
gratitude, whose pardon would have healed all divisions.
" Have you quite forgotten that this man was once your
Grace's friend? Or is it to murderers only that you will
extend the mercy of the Crown?''

The attack thus daringly begun was steadily maintained.
Wilkes had no keener, no acuter champion than Junius.
With great skill Junius avoided all appearance of violent
partisanship. He was careful to censure much in Wilkes's
conduct, careful to discriminate between Wilkes's private
character and Wilkes's public conduct. The unjustifiable
action of the House of Commons in forcing Colonel Lut-
trell upon the electors of Middlesex gave Junius the op-
portunity of assailing Wilkes's enemies without appearing
to champion Wilkes to the utterance. Junius admitted
that the Duke of Grafton might have had some excuse in
his opposition to Wilkes on account of Wilkes's character,
and might have earned the approval of men who, looking
no further than to the object before them, were not dissatis-
fied with seeing Mr. Wilkes excluded from Parliament.
But, Junius went on to argue, "you have now taken care
to shift the question; or, rather, you have created a new
one, in which Mr. Wilkes is no more concerned than any
other English gentleman. You have united the country
against you on one grand constitutional point, on the de-
cision of which our existence as a free people absolutely
depends. You have asserted, not in words but in fact, that
representation in Parliament does not depend upon the
choice of the freeholders."

The authorship of the letters of Junius is one of those
problems, like the problems of the identity of the Man in
the Iron Mask, which have never been settled with abso-
lute certainty and which probably never will be settled

17C9. THE TDEXTITY OF JUNIUS. 131

with absolute certainty. But between absolute certainty
and the highest degree of probability there is no very great
gulf fixed, and it is in the highest degree probable that
the author of the letters was Philip Francis. The letters
have been attributed to all manner of men. They were
ascribed, absurdly enough, to Wilkes. Wilkes could write
bitterly and he could write well, but he could write neither
so w^ell nor so bitterly as Mr. WoodfalFs correspondent.
Dr. Johnson, who ought to have known better, thought
they were written by Burke. It is his excuse that there
did not seem at the time any man of the same ability as
the writer of the letters except Burke. But Dr. Johnson,
who had been quick enough to recognize the genius of the
anonymous author of the essay on " The Sublime and the
Beautiful," erred when he thought that the same hand
penned the anonymous letters. The prose of Burke was
as far above the prose of Junius as the prose of Junius was
above the prose of Wilkes. None of the letters surpasses
in ferocity, none approaches in excellence the letter which
Burke wrote to the noble Duke who had slandered him.
The letters were attributed to Barre; they were attributed
to Lee, who was yet to earn another kind of fame; they
were attributed to many hands. To us, at least, it seems
clear that they were the work of Philip Francis.

The electors of Middlesex did petition against the sub-
stitution of the despised Luttrell for the adored Wilkes.
The consideration of the petition was the occasion for one
of the most memorable debates that can be recorded of
an age rich in memorable debates. On the one side the
influence of the Ministry and the influence of the King
induced Blackstone to deny himself and to falsify those
principles of constitutional law with which his name is
associated. On the other side principles as little honorable
but a far acuter political perception urged Wedderburn,
who was nominally a King's man, to go over to the popular
cause with the air of a Coriolanus. On the one side
Fletcher Norton upheld the authority of the resolution.
On the other side George Grenville argued against it with
an acumen which showed that an able lawyer might have

132 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. l.

been a great lawyer. In that famous debate Burke spoke
at his best, and yet the event of that debate was not the
speech of Burke, was not the speech of the experienced
politician, of the seasoned statesman, of the famous man
of letters, but the speech of a young man who was almost
a boy, the speech of Charles James Fox. All who have
written on the debate agree in their admiration of the
speech of one who, as far as Parliament was concerned,
was but a raw lad and who nevertheless held his own
on a point of law against experienced lawyers, in states-
manship against Grenville, and in eloquence against
Burke.

Of course the petition of Middlesex was rejected; the
election of Luttrell was confirmed. On the day of the
confirmation the King prorogued Parliament in a foolish
speech in which he seemed to think that he had gained a
victory. But if the King and the Ministry believed or
hoped that in expelling Wilkes from Parliament they had
got rid of Wilkes for good and all; if they believed or
hoped that in thus degrading Wilkes they would deprive
him of his popularit}^ with the people or even diminish
that popularity, they were speedily to be undeceived and
bitterly disappointed. Both King and ministers knew
their business very badly; with limitations of intelligence
which would have been disastrous to the conduct of a
small shop, they came in this instance, as in other in-
stances, within measurable distance of wrecking a royalty.
It is probable that Franklin, shrewd, cool observer though
he was, went too far wiien he wrote in his journal that if
George the Third had had a bad private character, and
John Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the
former out of his kingdom. But it is certain that the
signs of the King's unpopularity were now as significant
as were the signs of Wilkes's popularity. It had been said
that at this time a good half of the King's subjects pre-
ferred Wilkes to their King. The estimate is probably
under rather than above the fact. Wilkes was placed in
the position of being the champion of all the rights and
liberties that Englishmen most prized; the King in the

1769. UNPOPULARITY OF GEORGE THE THIRD. 133

position of being their most uncompromising, most obsti-
nate opponent.

Thus, while honors were offered daily to the prisoner of
the King's bench, insults were daily offered to his royal
enemy. The King could scarcely go abroad without be-
coming the object of a demonstration of popular disfavor,
and even in his palace he could not escape from deputa-
tions empowered to protest against the conduct of his
ministers. In all parts of the kingdom public meetings
were held, and from these public meetings petitions poured
in upon the King calling upon him to dissolve his Parlia-
ment. It has been truly observed that the custom
of holding public meetings for the discussion of
public grievances dates from this period. On two
solemn occasions the Lord Mayor of London, accom-
panied by the sheriffs, presented addresses to the King
remonstrating against the action of the House of Com-
mons. To the first address the King replied that it was
disrespectful to him, injurious to Parliament, and irrecon-
cilable to the principles of the Constitution. After which
reply he could think of nothing better, nothing more
kingly to do than to turn round to his courtiers and burst
out laughing. He treated the second address with the
same insolence, an insolence which provoked from the
Lord Mayor an uncourtierly reply which reminded the
King that those who endeavored to alienate the King's
affections from his subjects were violators of the public
peace and betrayers of the Constitution established by the
glorious Revolution. Those words were afterwards in-
scribed in gold upon the monument of the mayor who
spoke them. If those words, and words of like purport
and temper, at first moved the King to laughter, they soon
exasperated him past laughing. Once he clapped his hand
to his sword-hilt and declared that he would sooner have
recourse to that than grant a dissolution. The tension of
public feeling can best be estimated when a constitutional
sovereign on the one side could dare to make such a re-
mark; when a representative of the people like Colonel
Barre on the other side could dare in the House of Com-

134 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. l.

mons to say that disregard of public petitions might lead
the people to think of assassination.

While the King was insulted and insulting, and longing
to stifle opposition by the sword, John Wilkes in his prison
was receiving new proofs of the place he held in public
affection. He was elected alderman for the Ward of Far-
ringdon Without. We are told that his table at the prison
was daily supplied with the most rare and costly delica-
cies, presented to him by his admirers. The mysterious
Chevalier d'Eon sent him a present of Russian smoked
tongues, with the whimsical wish that they could have the
eloquence of Cicero, and the delicacy of Voltaire, to do
him honor. Friendly revellers sent him hampers of the
wine he liked the best. More serious gifts were laid at
his feet. For a while money literally rained in upon him.
The leading Whigs provided him with an income. Nobles
and great ladies sent him large sums. A number of poli-
ticians banded together under the title of the Society for
Supporting the Bill of Eights, and raised a great deal of
money, much of which went in meeting some of the heavy
debts with which Wilkes was embarrassed, much of which
went in keeping wp the princely way of living which suited
Wilkes's temperament, and which was perhaps not un-
suited to the part he was playing as the rival of a prince.
In the public press, on the platform, on the stage, his in-
fluence was enormous. His good pleasure sent politicians
to Parliament; his good pleasure made London sheriffs,
made provincial mayors. While the false rumor that he
was the author of " The Letters of Junius " only swelled
the volume of his fame, the author of those letters was
adding to Wilkes's pride and power by public champion-
ship and by private letters, choking with an adulation that
seems strange indeed from so savage a pen. If Garrick
dared for a moment to run counter to popular feeling, as
a little earlier he had dared to disdain the praise of
Churchill, he had to give way in the case of Wilkes, as he
had given way in the case of Wilkes's poet. The very name
of Wilkes drove men on both sides of the quarrel into a
kind of frenzy. Alexander Cruden, of the " Concord-

1110. A FIGHT FOR LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. 135

ance,'* showed his devotion to his King and his dislike of
Wilkes by carrying a large sponge with him w^henever he
walked abroad in order that he might wipe out the omi-
nous number, forty-five, w^henever he saw it chalked up. As
the number was chalked up everywhere by the Wilkites,
Cruden soon found the task beyond his powers. It was
lucky for him that he got no harm in his zeal, lucky for
him that he did not come across that militant clergyman
who pulled the nose of a Scotch naval officer for attacking
Wilkes and then met his man in Hyde Park and wounded
him.

On April 17, 1770, Wilkes's term of imprisonment came
to an end. Wilkes immediately started for Bath to avoid
a demonstration in London; but London was illuminated
in his honor, and in a great number of provincial towns
his release was celebrated with all the signs of a national
holiday. If he had been a hero in prison, he was no less
a hero out of it. He moved from triumph to triumph.
AVhile alderman he w^on a victory over the Court and the
Commons which did much to establish the liberty of the
press in England. The House of Commons, in a foolish
attempt to suppress reports of the debates in Parliament,
tried to arrest certain printers. Wilkes and the Lord
Mayor took the printers' part; advised them to conceal
themselves ; and in their turn arrested those who, in obedi-
ence to a royal proclamation and the orders of the House,
arrested the printers.

The House of Commons committed the Lord Mayor and
Alderman Oliver to the Tower, and summoned Wilkes to
appear at the bar. Wilkes coolly replied that as he was
a member of Parliament, and as he was not addressed as
a member of Parliament should be, and ordered to attend
in his place according to custom, he should ignore the
summons. The House made a second and yet a third order
for his appearance, each of which Wilkes treated with dis-
dain. It is a significant proof of the power of Wilkes's
popularity that the House did not take any steps to punish
his contumacy. While it affected to find a consolation in
the assurances of the King that Wilkes was " below the

136 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. l.

notice of the House/' it had to endure as best it might an
affront resentment of which would only have added to
Wilkes's popularity. The honors paid to the Lord Mayor
and the alderman during their imprisonment showed only
too plainly that hostility to the Court and the Parliamen-
tary majority was heroism in the eyes of the majority of
the citizens of London.

Once again Wilkes had won the day. From that time
forward Parliament put no embargo upon the publication
of reports of its debates. Fresh honors were showered on
Wilkes. He was elected sheriff. He was presented by the
Court of Common Council with a silver goblet, designed
according to his own w^sh with a representation of the
death of Caesar, and graced with the ominous motto from
one of the poems of Churchill:

May every tyrant feel
The keen deep searchings of a patriot steel,

a citation which, taken in conjunction with Barre's wild
talk in the House about assassination, was sufficiently sig-
nificant of the temper of the time.

Wilkes had been alderman; he had been sheriff; he w^as
now to bear the crown of civic honors. He was put in
nomination for the office of Lord Mayor. The Court party
made a desperate effort to defeat him. They had tried and
failed to prevent him from being elected to Parliament.
They had tried and failed to prevent him from being made
alderman, from being made sheriff. They now tried with all
their might to prevent him from being made Lord Mayor.
Wilkes had much to fight against. There were defections
from his own party. The once devoted Home had squab-
bled with his idol over money matters, and was now as ven-
omous an enemy as he had been a fulsome partisan. Alder-
man Townshend, an ex-Lord Mayor, strained all his influ-
ence, which was great in the City, against Wilkes. A wild
rumor got about at one time, indeed, that Townshend had
settled the difficulty of the Court forever by challenging
Wilkes and shooting him dead. The story had no founda-
tion, but for a moment it flattered the hopes of Wilkes's

1774. WILKES LORD MAYOR OF LONDON. 137

enemies and fluttered the hearts of Wilkes's friends. The
opposition ended as opposition to Wilkes always ended.
Twice he was placed at the head of the poll, and twice the
Court of Aldermen chose another candidate. The third
time, in the election of 1774, Wilkes was at last chosen
as Lord Mayor hy the Court of Aldermen in despite of the
unwearied efforts of the Court party to defeat him.
" Thus," wrote Walpole, " after so much persecution by
the Court, after so many attempts upon his life, after a
long imprisonment in jail, after all his own crimes and
indiscretions, did this extraordinary man, of more extraor-
dinary fortune, attain the highest office in so grave and
important a city as the capital of England, always reviving
the more opposed and oppressed, and unable to shock
Fortune and make her laugh at him who laughed at every-
body and everything !" It has been well said by Mr. Fraser
Kae that the siErnificance of election to the office of Lord
]\Iayor was very much greater more than a hundred years
ago than it is now. Then the Chief Magistrate of the
City was not necessarily a man who had passed through
certain minor offices and who rose by routine to fill the
highest. At that time the Corporation was a political
power, which ministers had to take into account, and
which sovereigns had to propitiate. A greater triumph
than the mayoralty followed in quick succession. At the
general election of 1774 Wilkes came forward again, and
for the fifth time, as candidate for ]\Iiddlesex. This time
he was not opposed- Luttrell abandoned an impossible
position and did not stand. Ten years after Wilkes's first
appearance in the House of Commons he returned to it
again in triumph as the member for Middlesex and the
Lord Mayor of London.

And here, on the top of his triumph, Wilkes may be
said to drop through the tissue of our history. He was
to live nearly a quarter of a century longer, three-and-
twenty years of a life that was as calm and peaceful as the
hot manhood that preceded it had been vexed and unquiet.
Although he lives in history as one of the most famous of
the world's agitators, he had in his heart little affection

138 A niSTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. cu l.

for the life of a public man. And the publicity of the
civic official was especially distasteful to him. He hated
the gross festivals, the gross pleasures, the gross display
of City life. He sickened of the long hours spent in the
business of mayoralty; he sickened yet more of the
pleasures incidental to mayoralty. Though he remained
in Parliament for many years, and conducted himself there
with zeal, discretion, and statesmanship, and always, or
almost always, proved himself to be the champion of lib-
erty and the democratic principle, he did not find his
greatest happiness in public speeches and the triumphs and
defeats of the division lobby. What he loved best on earth
was the society of his daughter, between whom and him-
self there existed a friendship that is the best advocate for
Wilkes's character. And he loved best to enjoy that so-
ciety in the kind of sham classic retirement which had so
powerful an attraction for so many of the men of the
eighteenth century. His cottage in the Isle of Wight, with
its Doric column to the manes of Churchill, with its shrine
to Fortuna Eedux, was his idea of the ancient city of
Tusculum.

His tastes and pleasures were the tastes and pleasures
of a man of letters. He affected a curious kind of scholar-
ship. The hand that had been employed upon the North
Briton now devoted itself to the editing of classic texts;
the intellect that had been associated with the privately
printed " Essay on Woman '^ was now associated with pri-
vately printed editions of Catullus which he fondly be-
lieved to be flawless, and of Theophrastus, whose Greek
text it pleased him to print without accents. In his tran-
quil old age he made himself as many friends as in his
hot manhood he had made himself enemies. Those who
had most hated him came under the spell of his attraction,
even the King himself, even Dr. Johnson. His interview
with Dr. Johnson is one of the most famous episodes in
the literary and political history of the last century. His
assurance to King George that he himself had never been
a Wilkite is in one sense the truest criticism that has ever
been passed upon him. If to be a Wilkite was to enter-

1797. DEATH OF WILKES. I39

tain all the advanced and all the wild ideas expressed by
many of those who took advantage of his agitation, then
certainly Wilkes was none such. But he was a Wilkite in
the better sense of being true to his own opinions and true
to his sense of public duty. When he expressed the wish
to have the words " A friend to liberty " inscribed upon
his monument, he expressed a wish which the whole tenor
of his life, the whole tone of his utterances fully justified.
And if he was loyal to his principles he could be chivalrous
to his enemies. Almost his last public appearance was at
the general election of 1796, when he came forward, with
a magnanimity which would have well become many a
better man, to support the candidature of Home Tooke
at Westminster, of the man who, after having been his
fawning friend, his fulsome flatterer, had turned against
him with the basest treachery and the bitterest malignity.
There may have been, surely there must have been, a vein
of irony in the words in which Wilkes complimented the
apostate and the turncoat as a man of public virtues. But
the irony was cloaked b}^ courtesy; if the action smacked
of the cynic, at least it was done in obedience to the behest
to forgive our enemies.

On ISTovember 28, 1797, the old, worn, weary man, who
had worked so hard and done so much, welcomed, in his
capacity of Chamberlain of the City of London, Admiral
Sir Horatio Xelson to the honorary freedom of the City.
The setting star saluted the rising star. Xelson was
then thirty-nine. He had been at sea since he was twelve.
He had voyaged in polar seas and tropic waters. He had
fought the Americans. He had fought the French. " Hate
a Frenchman as you would the devil " was his simple-
minded counsel of perfection. He had fought the Span-
iards. He had lost an eve at Calvi. He had lost an arm
at Santa Cruz. He was ten vears married. His love, his
error, his glory, Emma Hamilton, Carracioli, Trafalgar,
were vet to come.

Less than a month later, in the late December, 1797,
John Wilkes was dead. He was seventy years old. For
nearly forty years he had lived unknown, unheeded. For

140 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. l.

ten years he was the most conspicuous man in England,
the best hated and the best loved. For twenty years more
he was an honored public and private citizen. He will
always be remembered as one of the most remarkable men
of a century of remarkable men.

1749-68. A CHAMPION OF POPULAR RIGHTS. 141

CHAPTER LI.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

. One of the most immediate results of the Wilkes con-
troversy in the House of Commons was to draw atten-
tion to a young man who had entered Parliament at the
General Election of 1768 while he was still considerably
under age. The young member for Midhurst made him-
self conspicuous as the most impassioned opponent of
Wilkes. A strenuous supporter of Luttrell outside the
walls of Westminster, inside those walls the boy who repre-
sented the fictitious constituency of Midhurst distinguished
himself by the easy insolence with which he assailed Wilkes
and the popular cause which Wilkes represented. He de-
lighted in informing the delighted majority in the House
that he, for his part, " paid no regard whatever to the
voice of the people." When Burke condescended to notice
and to rebuke the impertinence of a youth of nineteen,
he little thought that the lad whom he reproved would
come to be a far more extreme advocate of popular rights
than he himself, or that the chronicle of the century in
recording the names of those who made themselves promi-
nent for the utterance of democratic opinions should place
the name of John Wilkes far below the name of Charles
James Fox.

It would not be easy to imagine a worse training for a
youth intended for the service of his country and des-
tined to contend for the honors of the State than the life
that was lived by Charles James Fox from early boyhood
to early manhood. It was not in the power of his father,
Henry Fox, Lord Holland, to set before his son the example
of a parent whose public life was pure, admirable, and
honorable. But in the domestic circle Lord Holland was

142 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. u.

a very different man from the corrupt and juggling
politician known to the world. In the domestic circle his
affections and his tendernesses were his most conspicuous
traits, and in the domestic circle he w^as as unfortunate
for his children through his very virtues as outside it he
was unfortunate by reason of his vices. Fox was a loving
husband, but he was an adoring father, and the extremcst
zeal and warmth of his adoration was given to his son
Charles James. The child was from the first precocious,
alert, and gifted beyond his years, and the father fostered
and flattered the precocity with a kind of worship that
proved, as it was bound to prove, disastrous. It seems to
have been Henry Fox's deliberate belief that the best way
to bring up a spirited, gifted, headstrong child was to
gratify every wish, surrender to every whim, and pander
to every passion that ebullient youth could feel. The anec-
dotes of the day teem with tales of the fantastic homage
that Fox paid to the desires and moods of his imperious
infant. He made him his companion while he was still in the
nursery ; he allow^ed him to be his master before he had fair-
ly left it. Never was the creed of Thelema acted upon more
consistently and persistently than by Lord Holland towards
Charles James Fox. It is an astonishing proof of the
strength and innate goodness of the childish nature that
it was not ruined outright, hopelessly and helplessly, by
the worst training ever given to a son by a father. That
it did Fox infinite harm cannot be denied and was only to
be expected. That it failed entirely to unbalance his mind
and destroy his character only serves to show the sterling
temper of Fox's metal. His youth was like his childhood,
petted, spoiled, wayward, capricious, and captivating.
Every one loved him, his father, his father's friends, the
school companions with whom he wrote Latin verses in
praise of lovely ladies with lovely names. All through his
life the love of men and the love of women was given to
him with a generosity that was only equal to the lovable
nature that compelled and commanded it. His career is
one record of unrivalled precocity. As a child he had been
his father's friend rather than his father's plaything; as a

1768. FOX'S SCHOLARSHIP. 143

lad he was his father's travelling companion, and learned
from that father the pleasant art of sowing wild oats not
with the hand but with the whole sack. He returned to
England a proficient gambler, a finished rake, the dear
friend of famous men, the darling of beautiful women, to
enter, before he was of age, upon that political career in
which it seemed certain that if he would follow in his
father's steps he might hope for more than his father's
fortunes. If Charles Fox had been quite cankered by his
father's care, if the essence of his genius had been corrupt-
ible, he might have given the King's friends a leader as
far removed from them as Lucifer from his satellites, and
contrived perhaps — though that indeed would have been
diflficult — to amass almost as much money as he was able
to spend with comfort. To judge by the young man's
initial enterprise, his Parliamentary career promised to
be as brilliant and as brutal as any king who hated
Chatham and hated Wilkes and hated the American colo-
nies could possibly desire. The furious intolerance of his
maiden speech was happily, however, only like that false
dawn familiar to travellers in the East. The true sunrise
was yet to come. But for six years he was as consistent
in his support of Lord North and the policy that North
represented as for the rest of his career he was consistent in
opposition to it.

The life of Fox recalls, in its brilliant activity, in its
no less brilliant scholarship, the dazzling careers of some
of those Italian princes who were equally at home and
equally distinguished in the battlefield and in the library,
equally happy in handling their weapons or in turning the
pages of the latest volume from the presses of Aldus that
renewed the youth of some masterpiece of Greece or Rome.
Fox's scholarship would have been remarkable in a man
whose days and nights were devoted to scholarship alone.
It was little less than marvellous in a man who gave a
large part of his days to the fiercest political fights of
a fiercely political age and a large part of his nights to
the fascination of the card-table, the disasters of the dice-
box, and the pursuit of the sweet, elusive shadow which is

144 A HISTUKY OF THE hVlli GEORGES. ch. li.

called pleasure. Fox's love for literature was indeed its
own reward. In the darkest hours of a life that tasted the
bitterness of many public and many private sorrows he
could steep his vexed spirit in the sweet waters watched
by the ]\Iuses, and arise cleansed, inspirited, and comforted.
Though he saw those public honors that his genius de-
served denied, though he lost those chances of command by
which he could best have served his country, though his
own fault wrecked his fortune and his own follies wasted
his substance and delivered the home of his glorious youth
into alien hands, he could turn from troubles that would
have broken the spirit and cracked the heart of a less
heroic fighter, to find solace and consolation in the golden
music of the " Odyssey " and the majestic cadences of
Virgil.

Fox loved the classics with the passion of a poet, not
with the patience of a pedant, and found that noble rapt-
ure in the human beauty of Euripides which Parson
Adams found in the divine grandeur of Aeschylus. But if
his reading in the literatures of Greece and Rome was wide
and deep, it was not limited to the literatures which the
world calls classic. France, Italy, Spain, offered him
their best, and found him a worthy worshipper, the faith-
ful lover and loyal student of all that was best in each.
He was the comrade of Don Quixote as he was the com-
rade of Orlando Furioso and the comrade of G-il Bias.
But he was never one of those who exalt the laurels of other
lands to the neglect of those of their own. He knew Eng-
lish literature and loved English literature as well as if
he had never scanned a Latin line or conjugated a Greek
verb or read a page of Moliere, or Calderon, or Metastasio.
He knew Chaucer as well as it was possible for any one
then or for generations later to know Chaucer, and he
appreciated him as few have appreciated him before or
since. The poets of his own time were as dear to him in
their degree as the singer of England's morning song.
It is hardly necessary to say that he was as familiar with
Shakespeare as every one should be and as very few arc-
Only one arc was wanting to the circle of his splendid

1768. FOX'S QUARREL WITH LORD NORTH. 145

culture, only one string was lacking to the bow of his pro-
digious reading. There was a great literature growing up
in a neighboring country of which Charles Fox knew noth-
ing, and of which we cannot doubt that he would have re-
joiced to know much. It is curious that in a country which
had been ruled for three successive reigns by German
sovereigns, the German language was entirely neglected
and the glorious dawn of German literature entirely
ignored. While Fox was still a young man, playing at love,
playing at cards, playing at politics, and through all these
diversions adding to that mighty store of learning, and
training his mind in the finest and most intimate judg-
ments upon the Greek and Roman poets, Germany had been
enriched by the masterpiece of the greatest critic since
Aristotle, and was fostering the golden youth of the great-
est poet since Shakespeare. It would have amazed Fox,
as it would have amazed everv Enorlish scholar then liv-
ing, if he could have been told that the spirit of the an-
tique world was to be renewed in a country which had
given them four generations of phlegmatic princes, and
in a language of which few scholars in England knew a
single word.

Fox^s term of adherence to North and to North's policy
was not too happy a time for the nominal superior. A
hot-headed young Lord of the Admiralty resigned his
office in a huff, and was not without difficulty persuaded
to return to office as Commissioner of the Treasury. The
breach between Fox and North was bridged over, but the
bridge was frail. The two men eyed each other with dis-
favor. Fox asserted his independence by occasionally
voting against the minister, by consorting with Burke.
After the death of Lord Holland, North revenged himself
by dismissing Fox from office in a letter famous for its
insolent brevity. For a time Fox still accorded to the
ministry an uncertain support, but he was drifting in
thought and speech and action in the inevitable direction
of his genius. The hour came when he took his seat on
the Opposition benches, and asserted himself as a formi-

146 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. li.

dable opponent of the Government. A quarrel across the
Atlantic gave him the opportunity to prove that the prin-
ciples which men of to-day would call Liberal principles
had gained one of their greatest and one of their most
eloquent champions

1765-74. LORD HILLSBOROUGH. 147

CHAPTER LII.

ON" THE CHARLES RIVER. -

While the battle had been raging over Wilkes at home,
the cloud of trouble had been growing larger and larger
abroad. The discontent of the American colonies in-
creased in direct ratio with the determination of the home
Government to ignore or to override that discontent. The
King was fortunate, or believed himself to be fortunate,
in tinding among his ministers the aptest instrument he
could desire for striking at the Americans. Lord Hills-
borough, the Secretary of State, was one of those men who
appear to be inspired by a very genius of perversity. He
had a power of misunderstanding a political situation and
underestimating a political crisis which, if it could only
have been reversed, would have earned him a foremost
place among the statesmen of his time. But his per-
versity was of like temper with the perversity of the
King, and Lord Hillsborough was admirably quali-
fied to interpret the King's dislike of his American
subjects and to make himself the mouthpiece of the anti-
Colonial feeling which had been steadily growing up in
the House of Commons since the days when the repeal of
the Stamp Act had known its season of brief popularity.

The comparative temperance and lucidity of the Rock-
ingham period seemed now indeed remote and memorable.
Exasperation and not conciliation appeared to be the per-
sistent note of England's colonial policy. It was England's
misfortune to be peculiarly ill served on both sides of the
Atlantic by those who were intrusted with the conduct of
colonial affairs. It would be hard to say whether the pro-
vincial governors abroad or the ministers at home were
least capable of understanding the people with whom they

148 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ui.

had to deal, or were most to blame for their actions in the
face of a danger that their own folly had brought about.
With a man like Lord Hillsborough for Secretary of State
in London, with a man like Bernard for Governor of
Massachusetts in Boston, it is not to be wondered at now,
and it ought not to have been wondered at then, that the
colonies refused to crystallize into tranquillity. Francis
Bernard was a man of certain ability, certain gifts, and
uncertain good intentions. But he was, as we have seen,
a perfervid Tory, a zealous chami^ion of the royal pre-
rogative, a profound believer in the wisdom of minimizing,
if not abrogating, the privileges of which the colonists,
and especially the colonists of Massachusetts, were so
proud. It was Bernard's peculiar fortune to be not merely
the supporter but the adviser of the English Ministries in
almost all the series of disastrous actions towards their
colonies. Bernard was inspired by a kind of furious folly
in his words and deeds. Unhappily, this kind of furious
folly was not confined to the colonial governor. Lord
Hillsborough was no less foolish and no less dangerous
than Bernard. Horace Walpole described Hillsborough as
nothing more than a pompous composition of ignorance
and want of judgment. He certainly was hopelessly igno-
rant of America, and he certainly showed a hopeless want
of judgment in his dealings with the Americans. Hills-
borough backed up Bernard in his blunders and his bragga-
docio with the light heart that comes of an empty head.
He backed up Bernard with a steady zeal that would have
been splendid if it could have been made to serve any use-
ful purpose. Where Bernard was bellicose and blustering,
Hillsborough blustered and was bellicose in his turn. It
was Hillsborough's honest, innate conviction that the
American colonists were a poor-spirited, feeble-hearted,
and still more feeble-handed pack of rascals, braggarts
whom a firm front discomfited, natural bondsmen to whom
it was only necessary, as in the old classic story, to show
the whip to awe them into cringing submission. This
theory found its fittest formula a little later, when Hills-
borough, speaking for the Government he adorned, and in-

1766. THE MUTINY ACT. 149

spired by a more than usual afflatus of folly, declared that
" we can grant nothing to the Americans except what they
may ask with a halter round their necks." It is difficult
to believe that a reasonable minister, endowed with a suffi-
cient degree of human ability to push his way from office
to office and from title to title, could have known so little
of the history of his own country and the characteristics
of his own countrymen as to think that any of England's
children were easily to be frightened into ignominious
supplication. But Hillsborough undoubtedly did think so,
and he always acted consistently in support of his strong
conviction that the independent colonists were nothing
more than a mob of cowardly malcontents. He acted on
this conviction to such good purpose that his name has
earned its place of honor with that of Grenville, of Town-
shend, and of Wedderburn, in the illustrious junta who
were successfully busy about the sorry business of con-
verting a great empire into a small one.

After the Stamp Act had raised its crop of disturbance
and disorder, the Government extended to the colonies the
measure called the Mutiny Act, for the quartering of
troops and providing them with necessaries. The Legis-
lature of N'ew York refused to execute this Act, on the
ground that it involved the very principle of taxation
which had just been abandoned by the repeal of the Stamp
Act. It made provision for the troops in its own way, and
calmly ignored the Act of Parliament. Parliament retort-
ed in due course by passing a bill by which the Governor,
Council, and Assembly of New York were prevented from
passing any law whatsoever until they had complied with
the letter and the spirit of the Mutiny Act. This measure
was loudly applauded in England, even by some who had
shown themselves very friendly to the grievances of the
colonists. When T^ew York found that her great deed was
too great, and, bending before the anger of Parliament,
reluctantly complied with the terms of the ^lutiny Act,
there were not wanting observers to point out that the
lesson, though only addressed to one colony, was of signifi-
cance to all, and that an inevitable surrender was the proof

150 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lii.

of the hopeless inferiority of the colonies when brought
into direct contest with the supreme power. These jubila-
tions were as short-lived as they were untimely. If New
York was weak and wavered, Massachusetts was more firm
of purpose. She sternly refused to comply with the terms
of the Mutiny Act. She went farther still in defiance of
the Government. She issued a circular to the other colo-
nies, calling upon them very frankly and very clearly to
co-operate in taking some united course for the purpose
of obtaining redress for the recent acts of the English
Government. This was the second instance of deliberate
combination for a definite end among the colonies, and it
caused much disquiet and more irritation to the Govern-
ment. Lord Hillsborough, always in favor of what he be-
lieved to be firm measures, immediately sent Governor
Bernard instructions to have the offending circular re-
scinded. Governor Bernard would have been only too glad
to obey, but obedience was not easy.

Bernard could command, but Massachusetts could refuse
to give way. When Bernard retaliated by dissolving the
Massachusetts Legislature, colony after colony replied to
his action by applauding the conduct of Massachusetts and
condemning Lord Hillsborough. The English Govern-
ment answered the protests of Maryland, Delaware, Vir-
ginia, Georgia, and New York by creating a new office
especially to deal with the colonies, and by appointing
Lord Hillsborough to fill the post. Everything that could
be done on the English side of the Atlantic by those in
power to show those on the American side of the Atlantic
that they might look in vain for justice or for considera-
tion from authority was done. Lord Hillsborough was
under the impression that a little firmness — what he called
firmness — would soon bring the colonists to their senses,
but every mail that came across the Atlantic showed that
Lord Hillsborough's theory was unsupported by facts. Now
it was the news that the seizure of John Hancock's sloop
" Liberty " for a breach of the revenue laws had brought
about a riot in Boston in which the Commissioners of
Revenue had to fiv for their lives. Now it was the news of

1770. THE BOSTON MASSACRE. 151

a great convention in Faneuil Hall to protest against the
troops which Hillsborough, at the request of Bernard,
poured into Boston. Now it was the news of daily in-
creasing hostility between the citizens of Boston and the
British soldiers quartered in the town. It was evident,
even to Hillsborough, that a dangerous spirit had been
aroused in America, but he still believed that America
could be easily frightened or chastised into good behavior.
He proposed to enforce an old law of Henry the Eighth
by which the colonists offending could be shipped across
the Atlantic for trial in England. All that was best and
most eloquent in the House of Commons protested against
such folly, and did not protest in vain. Some small con-
cessions were made in a half-hearted and grudging way to
the Americans. Governor Bernard was recalled. Some
of the obnoxious taxes were repealed, though Lord North
was not to be persuaded to abandon the tax on tea. These
poor concessions were made known to the colonists in a
more than usually uncivil and injudicious letter from Lord
Hillsborough. The concessions were too trivial and they
came too late. If Boston had its brief day of rejoicing
when Bernard took his departure, the men of Boston were
soon to be occupied with other thoughts than of banners
and bonfires. The bad feeling between the people and the
military grew worse, and at last displayed itself in active
hostility. March 5, 1770, was a memorable day in the his-
tory of Boston. Three thousand miles away Lord North
was moving in Parliament for the repeal of all the Amer-
ican duties with the single and fatal exception of the tax
on tea. In Boston a small quarrel between some of the citi-
zens and certain British troops under the command of
Colonel Preston suddenly blazed up into a dangerous col-
lision. Some of the soldiers fired. Several citizens were
killed, several more wounded. There was an angry call to
arms, and a general civil attack upon the military was only
with difficulty prevented by the Lieutenant-Governor, who
ordered the arrest and imprisonment of Colonel Preston
and the soldiers under him. These duly underwent a trial
whose conduct and whose issue reflect the highest honor

152 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ui.

upon Boston. The soldiers were defended by no less
prominent a man and conspicuous a patriot than John
Adams; and, thanks to John Adams, Colonel Preston and
six of his men were acquitted, and only two of the soldiers
convicted of manslaughter. But if the people of Boston
were willing that even their enemies should be tried fairly,
and fairly acquitted, they were not willing to allow the
events of that day to pass into oblivion. A public funeral
was accorded to the victims of the Boston Massacre, and
the grim name for a grim deed was for long years later
solemnly and publicly commemorated.

The bad news of the Boston Massacre was followed to
England by the bad news of the business of the " Gaspee."
The " Gaspee " was an English warship employed to en-
force the Eevenue Acts along the Rhode Island coast. Its
commander. Lieutenant Duddington, took an active de-
light in his duty which brought him into perpetual an-
tagonism with a people who regarded elusion of the revenue
laws as their privilege and prerogative. One night the
" Gaspee,^' pursuing the Providence packet, that had re-
fused to lower her colors in salutation as she passed, ran
aground in shallow water and lay fast bound for the night.
The news of her insolence to the Providence packet and
of her present plight flew abroad all over Providence.
After sundown a number of the townspeople of Provi-
dence, well armed and stern of purpose, rowed from the
town to the stranded " Gaspee," boarded her, and overcame
the ineffectual resistance of her crew. In the scuffle Dud-
dington was badly wounded. His wounds were dressed ;
he and his men were put on shore with all their belongings.
and then and there the " Gaspee " was set fire to and
watched till she was consumed. Though a large money
reward was offered for the apprehension of the offenders,
no one of the assailants was ever brought before the King's
justice.

Misfortunes like the Boston Massacre, disorders like
the burning of the " Gaspee," naturally increased the anti-
colonial exasperation of the English King and of ministers
like North and Hillsborough. North thought whatever

1767. THE LETTERS OF HUTCHINSON AND OLIVER. 153

the King wished him to think. Hillsborough still believed
that the Americans were only to be listened to when they
came with halters around their necks. King George was
convinced that the New England mutineers would speedily
prove to be lambs when England chose to play the lion.
At this moment of extreme tension something happened
which still further strained the relations between the two
countries.

In the year 1767, Hutchinson, who was then Governor-
General of Massachusetts, and Oliver, the Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor of the colony, wrote certain letters to Whatel}^, who
was private secretary to George Grenville. These were
private letters, confidential letters. Neither of the writers
dreamed that they would ever become public possessions.
They were intended to inform and to advise a minister's
secretary and the minister himself. In these letters Hutch-
inson and Oliver set forth very fully and frankly their
views as to the condition of the colonies and the better
way of dealing with them. Hutchinson and Oliver had
suffered much at the hands of the people of Boston. It
was chance rather than clemency which allowed them to
escape with their lives on that wild August day of 1765.
It is probable that their opinion of the popular party in
Massachusetts was colored if not prejudiced by memories
of the Stamp Act riots. Hutchinson and Oliver were all
for strong measures of repression and coercion. To their
minds the colonies were allowed a great deal too much
liberty; their people and their leaders were not nearly so
sensible of the advantage of British supremacy as they
ought to be; they were forever asserting their own rights
and privileges in a spirit that could only be properly met
by a prompt and comprehensive curtailment of those
rights and privileges. The colonists were too free, too
proud of their charters and constitutions. Hutchinson
and Oliver, with that fine superiority to charters and con-
stitutions which characterized so many a royal governor,
insisted that very considerable changes of government, all
in the direction of coercion, were necessary, in order to
make the conceited colonists know their place and to keep

154 A HISTORY OF THE FOLK GEORGES. ch. lii.

them in it. These letters no doubt made their due im-
pression upon Whately and upon Grenville. Letters like
them were always being despatched across the Atlantic by
governors and deputy governors to persons of importance
in England, pointing out how ungrateful the colonists
were for their many blessings, and what a good thing it
would be for them if a few of these blessings were taken
away. These letters had their influence upon the persons
of importance to whom they were addressed. They formed
the minds of ministers; they fed the fancies of the King.
They served to bolster up the singular system of ignorance
and incapacity which went by the name of colonial ad-
ministration.

Of course Hutchinson and Oliver and their kind thought
that they were only writing for ministerial eyes, that they
were only whispering into royal ears. They no doubt as-
sumed that their letters would be safely pigeon-holed, or
still more safely destroyed. It did not occur to them that
they ever could or would be made public, and by their pub-
lication thrust new weapons into the hands of the men
whose liberties they were so zealous to suppress. But the
unexpected often, if not always, happens. Whately died
in the June of 1772, and after his death the letters he had
received, and preserved, from Hutchinson and Oliver, were
somehow stolen. We shall probably never know how they
were stolen or by whom. It was claimed in later years, but
not proved, that Dr. Hugh Williamson was the means of
transmitting the letters to Franklin. All that we know
for certain is that they came into the hands of Benjamin
Franklin, and that Benjamin Franklin believed it to be
his duty as agent for Massachusetts to make them known
to the colony he represented. He was only allowed to do
so under certain strict and definite conditions. The source
from which they came was to be kept absolutely secret.
They were only to be shown to a few leading colonists ; they
were to be neither printed nor copied, and they were to be
returned promptly. Franklin accepted these conditions,
and as far as was in his power observed them. The source
from which they came was kept a secret, is still a secret.

1112. TEMPLE AND WHATELY FIGHT A DUEL. 155

But Franklin could not very well enforce, perhaps did not
very greatly desire to enforce, those conditions upon his
friends on the other side of the Atlantic. He pointed out
that, though they might not be printed or copied, they
might be talked about. And talked about they were. The
knowledge of them set all Boston afire with excitement,
filling the colonists with indignation and their opponents
Avith dismav. The Massachusetts House of Assemblv car-
ried by a large majority a petition to the King, calling for
the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver as betrayers of their
trust and enemies to the colony. Hutchinson, soon made
aware of the publicity given to the correspondence, demand-
ed to see the letters that were said to come from him. The
Assembly permitted this, but accorded the permission with
a show of distrust that was in itself the crudest affront. A
small committee was appointed to take the letters to
Hutchinson and to show him the letters in their presence,
the implication being that Hutchinson was not to be trust-
ed wdth the letters except in the presence of witnesses.
Hutchinson had to submit to the insult; he had also to
admit that the letters were genuine. He gave, or was un-
derstood to give, permission that the letters might be made
public. The letters were promptly made public. Thou-
sands of copies were struck off and scattered broadcast all
over the continent.

England was scarcely less excited than America by the
publication. There was a general curiosity to know how
the letters had been purloined and how they had been made
public. The Whately to whom the letters had been ad-
dressed had a brother, William Whately. William
Whately seems to have been alarmed lest it might be
thought that he was in any way instrumental to the pro-
mulgation of the letters. He diverted any suspicion from
himself by accusing another man of the theft. This other
man was a Mr. John Temple, who had once had an oppor-
tunity of examining the papers of the late Mr. Whately.
Temple immediately challenged his accuser; a duel was
fought, and as far as ordeal of battle went, Temple made
good his innocence, for he wounded William Whately. At

156 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lii.

this moment Franklin came forward. He admitted that
llie letters had come into his hands, and that he had
despatched them to America. He declined to say how they
did come into his hands, but he solemnly asserted the ab-
solute innocence of both Temple and Whately of any
knowledge of or complicity in the transaction. A storm
of popular anger broke upon Franklin. He was regarded
as a criminal, spoken of as a criminal, publicly denounced
as a criminal. Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, was
his denunciator, and he chose for the place of his attack
the House of Commons, and for the hour the occasion of
the presentation of the petition of Massachusetts for the
removal of Hutchinson and Oliver.

Wedderburn assailed Franklin in a speech whose ability
was only surpassed by its ferocity. In the presence of an
illustrious audience, that numbered among its members
some of the most famous men of that time or of any time,
AVedderburn directed against Franklin a fluency of in-
vective, a fury of reproach that was almost splendid in its
unbridled savagery. The Privy Councillors, with one ex-
ception, rocked with laughter and revelled in applause as
the Solicitor-General pilloried the agent from the colony
of Massachusetts Bay as a thief, well-nigh a murderer, a
man lost to all honor, all decency. The one grave excep-
tion to the grinning faces of the Privy Councillors was the
face of Lord North. He sat fixed in rigidity, too well
aware of all that depended upon the glittering slanders of
Wedderburn to find any matter of mirth in them. Only
one other man in all that assembly of genius and rank and
fame and wit carried a countenance as composed as that
of Lord North, and that was the face of the man whom
Wedderburn was bespattering with his ready venom. Ben-
jamin Franklin, dressed in a gala suit, unlike the sober
hal)it that was familiar with him, stood at the bar of the
House and listened with an unconquerable calm to all that
Wedderburn had to say. If it was the hour of Wedder-
burn's triumph, it was not the hour of Franklin's humilia-
tion. He held his head high and suffered no emotion to
betray itself while Wedderburn piled insult upon insult.

1772. WEDDERBURN'S ATTACK ON FRANKLIN. 157

and the majority of his hearers reeled in a rapture of ap-
proval. But if Franklin listened with an unmoved coun-
tenance, the words of Wedderburn were not without their
effect upon him. He was human and the slanders stung
him, but we may well believe that they stung him most as
the representative of the fair and flourishing colony whose
petition was treated with the same insolence that ex-
hausted itself in attacking his honor and his name.

The clothes philosophy of Diogenes Teufelsdroch is
readily annotated by history. There are garments that
have earned an immortalitv of fame. Such an one is the
sky-blue coat which Eobespierre wore at the height of his
power when he celebrated the festival of the Supreme
Being, and in the depths of his degradation when a few
days later he was carried to his death. Such an one is the
gala coat of flowered Manchester velvet which Franklin
wore in his day of degradation when he was compelled to
listen with a tranquil visage and a throbbing heart to the
fluent invective of Wedderburn, and which was laid away
and left unused through five tremendous years, not to be
taken from its retirement until Franklin wore it again
on the day of his greatest triumph, when he signed that
treaty with England which gave his country her place
among the nations of the world. Battles had been fought
and won in the saddest of civil wars, the trained and sea-
soned troops of Europe had learned the lesson of defeat
from levies of farmers, English generals had surrendered
to men of their own race and their own speech, and a new
flag floated over a new world between the day when Frank-
lin went smartly dressed to Westminster to hear Wedder-
burn do his best and worst, and the day when Franklin
went smartly dressed to Paris as the representative of an
independent America. Franklin's flowered coat is no less
eloquent than Caesar's mantle.

The man whom the Court party employed to deal the
death-blow to colonial hopes, and to overwhelm with in-
sult and abuse the colonial agent, was a countryman and
intimate friend of the detested Bute. Alexander Wedder-
burn attained the degree of eloquence with which he now

158 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR fJEORCES. ch. i.ii.

assailed Franklin at a cost of scarcely less pains than those
devoted by Demosthenes to conquer his defects. He had
a strong and a harsh Scotch accent, and neither the accent
nor the race was grateful to the London of the eighteenth
century. Wedderburn's native tenacity enabled him in a
great degree to overcome his native accent. He toiled
under Thomas Sheridan and he toiled under Macklin the
actor to attain the genuine English accent, and his labors
did not go unrewarded. Boswell writes that he got rid
of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only so
much of the " native wood-note wild " as to mark his
countrv, " which if any Scotchman should affect to fororet
I should heartily despise him," so that by degrees he
formed a mode of speaking to which Englishmen did not
deny the praise of eloquence. Successful as an orator,
secure in the patronage of the royal favorite, Wedderburn
sought the society of the wits and was not welcomed by
them. Johnson disliked him for his defective colloquial
powers and for his supple readiness to go on errands for
Bute. Foote derided him as not only dull himself, but the
cause of dulness in others. Boswell, who admired his
successful countryman, assumed that his unfavorable ap-
pearances in the social world were due to a cold affectation
of consequence, from being reserved and stiff. The scorn
of Johnson and the sneers of Foote would not have saved
him from oblivion; he owes his unlovely notoriety to his
assault upon Franklin, with all its disastrous consequences.
Many 3'^ears later, when Wedderburn was Lord Lough-
borough and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a hu-
morous editor dedicated to him ironically a new edition
of Franklin's " Rules for Eeducing a Great Empire to a
Small One."

The English Government was now resolved to show
that it would temporize no longer with the factious colo-
nists. If in a spirit of rash and ill-repaid good-nature it
had repealed certain taxes, at least it would repeal no
more. The tax on tea existed; the tax on tea would be
enforced; the tax on tea should be respected. The East
India Company had a vast quantity of tea which it desired

1113. THE BOSTON "TEA-PARTY." I59

to sell. It obtained from the Government the permission
to export the tea direct to America instead of being obliged
to let it pass through the hands of English merchants.
Under such conditions the tea could be sold very cheaply
indeed in the colonies, and the Government hoped and be-
lieved that this very cheapness would be a temptation too
keen for the patriotism of a tea-drinking city to withstand.
If the King and the East India Company were resolved
to force their tea upon the American colonists, the Ameri-
cans were no less stubborn in their resolution to refuse it.
The tea-ships sailed the seas, weathered the winds and
waves of the Atlantic, only to be, as it were, wrecked in
port. The colonists in general, and especially the colo-
nists of Massachusetts, were resolved not to suffer the tea
to be landed, for they knew that once landed it could be
sold so cheaply that it would be hard for many to resist
the temptation to buy it. Every effort was made to pre-
vent the importation. In many cases the consignees were
persuaded, not wholly without menace, to make public en-
gagement to relinquish their appointments. Pilots were
advised as patriots to lend no aid to the threatened im-
portation; indeed, it was pretty plainly hinted to some of
them that they would best prove their patriotism by using
their especial knowledge in such a way as would most
effectually prevent it. Boston set the example of self-
denial and of resistance. In the December of 1773 three
ships laden with tea arrived in her port. Their captains
soon heard of the hostility to their mission, were soon
warned of the dangers that awaited them. Alarmed at
their perils, the captains declared their perfect willingness
to return with their cargoes to England if they were per-
mitted to do so by the Board of Customs and the persons
to whom the tea had been consigned. But the willingness
of the captains was of no avail. The consignees insisted
that the tea should be delivered to them, and neither the
Custom House nor the Governor would grant the cap-
tains permission to return. But if the consignees and the
authorities were resolved that the tea should be landed,
the citizens of Boston were equally resolved that it should

ICO A HISTORY OF TDE FOUR GEORGES. en. lit.

not. Their fantastic metliod of giving force to their reso-
lution has made it famous. In the dusk of a December
e\ening the three tea-ships were suddenly boarded by what
seemed to be a small army of Mohawk Indians in all the
terror of their war-paint. These seeming Indians were in
reality serious citizens of Boston, men of standing, wealth,
and good repute, wearers of names that had long been
known and honored in the Commonwealth. The fright-
ful paint, the gaudy feathers, the moccasins and wampum,
the tomahawks, scalping-knives, and pistols that seemed
so alarming to the peaceful captains of the boarded ships
were but the fantastic accoutrements that concealed the
placid faces and the portly persons of many a respectable
and respected Boston burgess.

The plan had been schemed out by a conclave of citizens
around a bowl of punch in Court Street, and was carried
out with a success that was no less remarkable than its
peacefulness. The trappings of the red man concealed
the identity of many prominent citizens, friends of John
Hancock and Samuel Adams, their rivals in ability and
their peers in energy. The sham savages were so numerous
and so determined that no resistance was offered by the
captains or the crews of the vessels. The shore was picket-
ed with sentinels ready to resist any interference on the
part of any representatives of royal authority. There was
no interference. The conspirators of the punch-bowl and
those who obeyed their instructions kept their secret so
close, and did their work so quickly, that those in authority
knew nothing about the business until the business was
happily over. In about two hours the entire cargo of the
three tea-ships was dragged out of the hold and flung into
the sea. The patriotic citizen who had asked significantly
if tea could be made with salt water was satisfactorily
answered by the Mohawks when they cast overboard the
last of their three hundred and forty-two chests, and pre-
pared to disappear as rapidly and as mysteriously as they
had come. During the whole adventure only one man was
hurt, Avho tried to secrete some of the tea about his person,
and who was given a drubbing for his pains. The Mo-

17*73. AFTER TOE BOSTON^ " TEA-PA RTT." 161

hawks scattered and disappeared, washed their faces, rolled
up their blankets, concealed their pistols and axes, and as
many reputable Boston citizens returned to their homes.
It is related that some of them on their way home passed
by a house in w^hich Admiral Montague was spending the
evening. ^Montague heard the noise of the trampling feet,
opened the window and looked out upon the fantastic pro-
cession. No doubt some news of what had happened had
reached him, for he is reported to have called out : " Well,
boys, you have had a fine night for your Indian caper. But
mind, you've got to pay the fiddler yet." One of the Mo-
hawk leaders looked up and answered promptly: "Oh,
never mind, squire. Just come out here, if you please, and
we'll settle the bill in two minutes." The admiral con-
sidered the odds were against him, that the joke had gone
far enough. He closed the window, leaving the bill to be
settled by whoso thought fit, and the laughing savages
sw^ept on to their respectable wigwams. If some very repu-
table citizens found a few leaves of tea in their shoes when
they took them off that night, they said nothing about it,
and nobody was the wiser. So ended the adventure of the
Boston Tea-party, which was but the prologue to advent-
ures more memorable and more momentous. We learn
that at least one of these masquerading Indians survived
to so late a date as the ^larch of 1846. Men now living
may have clasped hands with Henry Purkitt and David
Kinnison and heard from their own lips the story of a
deed that enraged a King, offended Chatham, was disap-
proved of by George Washington, and was not disapproved
of by Burke.

The news of the Boston Tea-party reached London on
January 19, 1774, and was public property on the 21st.
Other news little less unpleasant soon followed. At
Charleston tea was only landed to lie rotting in damp
cellars, not an ounce of it to be bousjht or sold. In Phila-
delphia a proclamation of December 27, 1773, announced
that " THE TEA-SHIP being arrived, every Inhabitant
who wishes to preserve the Liberty of America is desired
to meet at the STATE-HOUSE, This Morning, precisely

VOL. III.— 6

102 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lii.

at TEN O'Clock, to advise what is best to be done on this
alarming Crisis." " What was best to be clone " proved
to be to compel the tea-ship to return at once with its
cargo to England. New York refused to allow the tea-
ship " Nanc}^ " to enter the harbor, and if some tea was
eventually landed under the cannon of a man-of-war, it
was only to be locked up as in Charleston, and to be left
to lie unused. The bad news was received in England
with an unreasoning fury by those whose fault it w^as, and
by those who knew nothing at all about the matter ; with a
grave indignation by those who, like Pitt, were as resolute
to support the supremacy of England as to plead for jus-
tice to her colonies; with despair by those who dreamed of
an honorable and abiding union between the two peoples;
and with applause by those w^io admired any protest
against injustice, however vehement and irregular.

It is difficult, in reading the del)ates on the troubles in
America, to credit the sanity of the majority of the
speakers. These advocated a colonial policy that should
only have commended itself to a session of Bedlamites, and
clamored for a treatment ol the colonists that might well
have shocked the susceptibilities of a savage. No Vir-
ginian planter could be more disdainful of the rights of
his slaves, or more resentful at any attempt to assert them,
than the average member of Parliament w^as disdainful
of the rights of the American colonists and resentful at
their assertion. The English country gentlemen who ap-
plauded the ministers and who howled at Burke seemed to
be absolutely unconscious that the men of Massachusetts
and the men of New York were not merely like themselves
made in the same image, but brethren of their own race,
blood of their blood and bone of their bone, children of
the same stock whose resistance to oppression was recorded
at Runnymede and Worcester, at the Boyne and at Cul-
loden. Even if the colonists had been the knaves and fools
and cowards that the Parliamentary majority appeared to
think them, the action of that majority was of a kind
eminently calculated to lend strength to the most feeble
spirit and courage to the most craven heart. The coarse

1114. CLOSING THE PORT OF BOSTON. 163

contempt, the brutal menace which were the distinguishing
features of all that ill-timed oratory might well have goaded
into resistance men who had been slaves for generations till
servility had grown a habit. Yet this contempt and
menace were addressed to men trained by harsh experiences
to be stubborn in defence and sturdy in defiance, men who
had won their liberty from the sea and the wilderness, who
were as tenacious of their rights and as proud of their
privileges as they were tenacious of the soil which they
had wrested from the red man and the wolf, and proud of
the stately cities which had conquered the forest and the
swamp. It was the descendants of Miles Standish and
John Smith, of Endicott and Bradford and Underbill and
Winslow whom the Squire Westerns of Westminster were
ready to insult and were eager to enslave.

It must, however, be remembered that even men who had
advocated the claims of the colonies were, or professed to
be, shocked at the daring deed of the men of Boston. Dean
Tucker declared that mutinous colonies were no use to
England, and had better be allowed to depart. Chatham
found the action of the Boston people criminal, prompted
by passions and wild pretences. In America George
Washington disapproved of the exploit.

The East India Company, pressed by the pinch of finan-
cial difficulties, clamored for a revenge that the King was
resolved to give them. Under his instigation Lord North,
in the beginning of 1774, introduced the famous measure
for closing the port of Boston against all commerce. The
Bill declared that " in the present condition of the town
and harbor the commerce of his ^tajesty's subjects cannot
be safely carried on there." It was accordingly asserted
to be " expedient that the officers of his Majesty's Customs
should be forthwith removed from the said town." It was
enacted that " from and after the first day of June, 1774,
it shall not be lawful for any person or persons to lade, or
cause to be laden, or put off from any quay, wharf, or other
place within the town of Boston, or in or upon any part
of the shore of the bay, commonly called the harbor of
Boston, into any ship, vessel, boat, etc., any goods, wares,

1G4 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. Lll.

or mcrcliniidiou whatsoever ... or to take up, discharge,
01 cause or procure to be taken up or discharged within
tlie town, out of any boat, lighter, ship, etc., any goods,
wares, or merchandise whatsoever . . . under pain of the
forfeiture of the goods and merchandise and of the boat,''
and so on, in a long and drastic measure practically in-
tended to ruin Boston. This was what the Government
thought it well to describe by the word " expedient." This
was not all. Comprehensive alterations of the laws of the
province followed. The charter of Massachusetts was
changed. The council for the province, which had hitherto
been chosen by the people, was now to be chosen by the
Crown, and the judges of the province were to be nomi-
nated by the Crown. Another measure authorized the
Governor to send persons implicated in the disturbances to
England for trial. Boston and the province were indeed
to be heavily punished and sternly brought to their senses.
The King and the King's ministers had hoped fondly,
in the old as well as the new sense of the word, that their
action towards the port of Boston would effectually hum-
ble the spirit and crush the opposition of that mutinous
city. Their scheme was founded upon a nice calculation
of the innate baseness of human nature. They argued that
the closing of the port of Boston would turn the stream of
her commerce in the direction of other cities, which would
be only too glad to enrich themselves at the expense of
their disabled comrade. While they believed that the pun-
ishment of Boston would thus breed a selfish disunion in
the province of ^lassachusetts, they trusted also that the
spectacle of the severe punishment meted out to Massa-
chusetts would have its wholesome deterring effect upon
other colonies and destroy at once whatever desire for
union might exist among them. The King and the King's
ministers were the more deceived. Their ingenious scheme
produced a result precisely the opposite of that which they
so confidently anticipated. The other ports of Massa-
chusetts did not seize with avidity the opportunity for
plunder afforded them by the humiliation of Boston. The
other colonies were not driven into discord by the sight of

1774. GExVERAL GAGE. 165

the punishment of Massachusetts. On the contrary, the
ports of Massachusetts refused to take advantage of the
degradation of Boston, and the colonies were urged, and
almost forced, into union by what they regarded as the
despotic treachery of the English Crown. The most de-
voted friend, the most enthusiastic advocate of the rights
of the American colonists could scarcely have devised bet-
ter means of drawing them together and welding them
into a solid fellowship than those which had been employed
by George the Third and his advisers for the purpose of
keeping them apart forever.

An immense number of copies of the Boston Port Bill
were sent with great rapidity all over the colonies. In the
fine phrase which we must needs believe to be Burke's, these
had the effect which the poets ascribe to the Fury's torch;
they set the countries through which they passed in a flame.
At Boston and Xew York " the populace had copies of the
Bill printed upon mourning paper with a black border,
which they cried about the streets under the title of a
barbarous, cruel, bloody, and inhuman murder." In other
places the Bill was publicly burned. All over the Conti-
nent great meetings were held, at which, with more or less
vehemence of speech, but with a common enthusiasm and
a common indignation, the Bill was denounced, and the
determination to resist it defiantly asserted. When Gen-
eral Gage arrived on his mission of administration he
found not merely the colony of Massachusetts, but the
whole continent in an uproar. He had to deal with a vast
majority of the people who were in proclaimed resistance
to the Act, and who only differed in the extreme of resist-
ance to which they were prepared immediately to go, and
a minority who either approved or did not altogether dis-
approve of the Act. Gage was condemned to the govern-
ment not of a cowed, humbled, and friendless province,
but of a raging nation, frantic at the infringement of its
rights, and sustained in the struggle it was resolved to
make by the cheer and aid of a league of sister nations.
The flame from the Fury's torch had spread with a ven-
geance. Gage was a brave man, an able man, an honor-

166 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lii.

able man ; but for Alexander he was a little over-parted.
The difliculties he had to encounter were too great for him
to grapple with; the work he was meant to do too vast for
his hands or the hands of any man. He was sent out to
sway a chastened and degraded province ; he found himself
opposed by a defiant people, exalted by injustice and ani-
mated by attack.

1774. DEATH OF OLIVEH GULDiiMlTH. IQ\

CHAPTER LIII.

THE '' VICAR OF WAKEFIELD/'

In the early spring that followed upon the winter when
the Mohawks of Boston made tea with salt water, at a
time when politicians were busy fighting over the Boston
Port Bill, and neither side dreamed of the consequences
that could come of a decision, one of the gentlest and
eweetest writers of the English speech passed quietly, and
somewhat unhappily, away from a world he had done so
much to make happy. With Oliver Goldsmith an epoch
of literature came to an end, as the year that saw his death
ended an epoch in the history of the world. The char-
acteristic literature of the eighteenth century, the litera-
ture that began with Swift and Addison, and Steele and
Pope; that boasted among its greatest the names of Sterne
and Richardson, Smollett and Fielding, came to its close
with the genius of Goldsmith. With the new conditions
which were coming over the world a new literature was
to be created. Wordsworth w^as a child of four, at Cocker-
mouth; Coleridge was a child of four, at Bristol; over in
Germany a young poet, whose name was unknown in Eng-
land, had been much influenced by Goldsmith's immortal
story, and was in his turn and time to have a very pro-
found influence over the literature of Goldsmith's adopted
country. The year of Goldsmith's death was the year in
which the young Goethe published those " Sorrows of
Werther " which marked the birth of a new form of ex-
pression in art.

Goldsmith was born in Ireland, at Pallas, in the county
of Longford, in the early November of 1728. He lived
for over forty-five years a life of poverty, of vagrancy, of
squalor, of foolish dissi2)ation, of grotesque vanity, of an

168 A niSTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. liu.

industry as amazing as his improvidence, of a native idle-
ness that was successfully combated by a tireless industry,
of an amazing simplicity that was only rivalled by his
amazing genius. There were a great many contrasting and
seemingly incompatible elements in Goldsmith's queer
composition, but his faults were not of a kind to prevent
men from finding him lovable, and, whatever his faults
were, they left no stain upon his writings.

The writings of Goldsmith are distinguished in English
literature, and, indeed, in the literature of the world, by
their sweet pure humor, fresh and clear and sparkling as
a fountain whose edges the satyr's hoof has never trampled.
They charm by their humanity, by their tender charity, by
the nobility of their lesson, a nobility only heightened by
the intense sympathy with the struggles, and sorrows, and
errors of mankind A new St. Martin of letters, he was
ever ready to share his mantle of pity with the sad and
sinning. He had himself suffered so much, and been so
tempted and tested, and had retained throughout his trials
so much of the serenity of a child, that all his writings
breathe compassion for frailty and failure with something
of a schoolboy sense of brotherhood which softens even
his satire. The flames of London's fiery furnace had
blazed and raged about him, but he passed through them
unconsumed. The age in which he lived was not an age
of exalted purity, the city wherein he dwelt was scarcely
saintly. He lived in some of the most evil days of the
eighteenth century, but his writings and his life escaped
pollution. He was not a saint, indeed; he was a spend-
thrift and he loved his glass, but he was never tainted with
tlie servile sins of cities. Through all the weltering horror
of Hogarth's London we seem to see him walk with some-
thing of the freshness of his boyhood still shining on his
face. The reflection of the Irish skies was too bright upon
his eyes to let them be dimmed by the squalor and the
sliame of a squalid and shameful city.

With the true instinct of his fine nature he made his
friends and companions among the wisest and highest of
his time. His intimates and companions were Edmund

1774. THE FRIENDS OF GOLDSMITH. 169

Burke, and Dr. Johnson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He
had women friends too, as wisely chosen as the men —
women w^ho were kind to him and admired him, women
whose kindness and admiration were worth the winning,
women whose friendship brightened and soothed a life
that was darkened and vexed enough. Mary Horneck and
her sister were the stars of his life, his heroines, his idols,
his ideals. He has made Marv Horneck immortal as the
" Jessamy Bride." In his hours of poverty he was cheered
by the thought of her; while he lived he worshipped her,
and when he died a lock of his hair was taken from his
coffin and given to her. Thackeray tells a touching little
story of the Jessamy Bride. She lived long after the death
of the man of genius who adored her, lived well into the
nineteenth century, and " Hazlitt saw her, an old lady,
but beautiful still, in Northcote's painting-room, who told
the eager critic how proud she was always that Goldsmith
had admired her."

Goldsmith was a companionable being and loved all
company that was not vicious and depraved. He could be
happy at the club in the society of the great thinkers and
teachers and wits of the time. He could be more than
happy at Barton, in the society of Mary and her sister.
But he could be happy too, in far humbler, far less roman-
tic fellowship. " 1 am fond of amusement," he declares
in one of his most delightful essays, " in whatever com-
pany it is to be found, and wit, though dressed in rags, is
ever pleasing to me." There was plenty of wit dressed in
rags drifting about the London of that day. Men of
genius slept on bulkheads and beneath arches, and starved
for want of a guinea, or haunted low taverns, or paced St.
James's Square all night in impecunious couples for sheer
need of a lodging, cheering each other's supperless mood
with political conversations and declarations that, let come
what might come, they would never desert the Ministry.
But Goldsmith unearthed men of genius whose names
nobody ever heard of, and studied them and made merry
with them, and transferred them to his pages for us to
make merry with more than a century after Goldsmith

170 A IIISTORV OF TiJE FOUR GEORGES. cii. liii.

fell asleep. We may suspect that Goldsmith never really
found tliose wonderful beggars he chronicles. He did not
discover them as Cabot discovered America; he is their
inventor, as the fancy of poets invented the Fortunate
Islands.

Goldsmith's strolling player is as real as Richard Sav-
age, with whom he is contemporary, and it must be ad-
mitted that he is a more presentable personage. What a
jolly philosophy is his about the delights of beggary ! It
has all the humor of Eabelais with no touch of the Tou-
raine grossness. It has something of the wisdom of Au-
relius, only clad in homespun instead of the purple. The
philosophy of contentment was never more merrily nor
more whimsically expressed. A synod of sages could not
formulate a scheme in praise of poverty more impressive
than the contagious humor of his light-hearted merriment.
The strolling player has the best of the argument, but he
has it because he is speaking with the persuasive magic of
the tongue of Oliver Goldsmith.

The same pervading cheerfulness, the same sunny phi-
losophy, which is, however, by no means the philosophy of
Pangloss, informs all his work. Beau Tibbs boasting in
his garret; Dr. Primrose in Newgate; the good-natured
man, seated between two bailiffs, and trying to converse
with his heart's idol as if nothing had happened; Mr.
Hardcastle, foiled for the five-hundredth time in the tale
of Old Grouse in the Gun Room; each is an example of
Goldsmith's method and of Goldsmith's manner. If Gold-
smith did not enjoy while he lived all the admiration, all
the rewards that ])elonged of right to his genius, the
generations that have succeeded have made amends for
the errors of their ancestors. " She Stoops to Conquer "
is still the most successful of the stock comedies. If " The
Good-Natured Man " can scarcely be said to have kept the
stage, it is still the delight of the student in his closet.
What satires are better known than the letters of the
" Citizen of the World " ? What spot on the map is more
familiar than Sweet Auburn ? As for the " Vicar of
Wakefield," what profitable words could now be added to

1774. GOLDSMITH AND DR. JOHNSON. IVl

its praise ? It has conquered the world, it is dear to every
country and known in every language, it has taken its place
by unquestionable right with the masterpieces of all time.

" Dr. Goldsmith," said his most famous friend of the
man who was then lying in the Temple earth — " Dr. Gold-
smith was wild, sir, but he is so no more." This epitaph
has been quoted a thousand times, but it must in no sense
be taken as a summing-up of the dead man's career. It was
a rebuke, justly administered, to the critic who at such a
moment could have the heart to say that Oliver Goldsmith
had been wild. Dr. Johnson, who uttered the rebuke, put
the same thought even more profoundly in a letter ad-
dressed to Bennet Langton shortly after Goldsmith's death.
In this letter he announces Goldsmith's death, speaks of his
" folly of expense," and concludes by saying, " But let not
his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man."
These simple words are infinitely more impressive than
the magniloquence of the epitaph which Johnson wrote
on Goldsmith.

Goldsmith lived in London and he died in London, and
he lies buried in the precincts of the Temple. The noise,
and rattle, and roar of London rave daily about his grave.
Around it rolls the awful music of a great city that has
grown and swollen and extended its limits and multiplied
its population out of all resemblance to that little London
where Goldsmith lived and starved and made merry, and
was loved, and dunned, and sorrowed for. The body that
first drew breath among the pleasant Longford meadows,
which seem to stretch in all directions to touch the sky,
lies at rest within the humming, jostling, liberties of the
Temple. It is perhaps fitting that the grave of one who
all his life loved men and rejoiced so much in companion-
ship should be laid in a place where the foot of man is
almost always busy, where silence, when it comes at all,
comes only with the night.

There is not a space in the scope of this history to deal,
otherwise than incidentally, with the literature of Eng-
land in the eighteenth century. The whole Georgian era,
from its dawn to its dusk, is rich in splendid names in let-

172 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. liii.

tcrs as in art. 1'he great inheritance from the Augustan
age of Anne, the anguish of Grub Street, the evolution of
the novel, the eloquence of the pulpit and the l)ar, the
triumphs of science, the controversies of scholars, the fort-
unes of the (Iranui, the speculations of philosophy, the
vacillations of the pamphleteer, the judgments of the
critics, the achievements of historians — these are themes
whose intimate consideration is outside the range of this
work's purpose. All that is possible is here and there to
linger a little in the company of some dear and famous
figure — a Swift, a Johnson, a Goldsmith, a Sheridan —
who stands above his fellows in the world's renown or in
our individual affection, who played while he lived his
conspicuous part on the great stage of public life, or who
helped conspicuously to influence public thought. The
selection is, within these limitations, inevitably arbitrary,
and is given frankly as such. Certain names assert them-
selves masterfullv, and of these Goldsmith's is one of the
most masterful. He added images to daily life and com-
mon thought as Bunyan did or Shakespeare. There is
no more need to explain Dr. Primrose than there is to
explain ;\rr. Facing-both-ways, and if Beau Tibbs is only
less familiar as Osric, Tony Lumpkin is to the full as
familiar as Falstaif. Goldsmith himself is the lovable
type of a class that was often unlovely in the eighteenth
century, the needy man of letters. If he has his lodging
in the Grub Street of Dreams, his presence there brings
sunlight into the squalid place, and an infinite humor, an
infinite charity compensate royally for a little finite folly
and finite vanity. In the great art he served and the great
age he adorned Goldsmith stands, not alone, but apart,
with the very human demigods.

1775. THE PHILADELPUIA CONGRESS. 173

CHAPTER LIV.

YANKEE DOODLE.

An English ministry and an English king were con-
vinced that everything necessary to do for the suppression
of the mutinous spirit in a turbulent but unwarlike people
had been done. The existence of Boston as a trading port
had been abolished; Carthage had been blotted out; there
was an English army within the walls of Boston; there
was an Ens^lish fleet in the Charles River. Who could
doul)t that the cowardlv farmers whom Sandwich derided,
and their leaders, the voluble lawyers whom Sandwich de-
spised, would be cowed now into quiescence, only thankful
that things were no worse? The best and wisest in Eng-
land were among those who did doubt, but they were like
Benedict in the play — nobody marked them, or at least
nobody responsible for any control over the conduct of
affairs. Official confidence was suddenly and rudely
shaken. The lawyers proved to be men of deeds as well
as of words. The disdained farmers showed that the de-
scendants of the men who had fought with beasts and with
Indians after the manner of Endicott and Standish had
not degenerated in the course of a few generations. Over
the Atlantic came news which made the Boston ^lassa-
cre, the burning of the " Gaspee," and the Boston Tea-
party, seem trivial and insignificant events. An astound-
ed Ministry learned that a formal Congress of Represent-
atives of the different colonies had been convened and had
met in Philadelphia, and had drawn up a Declaration of
Rights. Chatham admired and applauded their work. To
the King and the King's ministers it was meaningless
when it was not offensive. But the colonists showed that
they could do more than meet in Congresses and draw up

174 A HISTORY OF TUE FOUR GEORGES. ch. liv.

splendid State Papers. The next news was of acts of war.
Gage schemed a raid upon the stores of powder and arms
accumiihited by the disaffected colonists in Concord. Warn-
ing of his plan was carried at night by a patriotic engraver
named Paul Pevere to every hamlet within reach of a
horse's ride. There was a skirmish at Lexington on the
road to Concord between the King's troops and a body
of minute-men, which resulted in the killing and wound-
ing of many of the latter and the dispersal of their force.
An expedition that began with what might in irony be
termed a victory for the British arms ended in a disaster
as tragic as it was complete. Concord forewarned had
nothing to yield to the English soldiers who invaded her
quiet streets; but the surrounding country, equally fore-
warned, answered the invasion by sending bodies of armed
farmers and minute-men from every point of the compass
to the common centre of Concord. There was a sharp,
short fight on Concord Bridge, w^hich ended in the repulse
of the royal troops and the death of brave men on both
sides. Then the British officer decided to retreat from
Concord. It proved one of the most memorable retreats
in history. From behind every tree, every bowlder, every
wall, every hedge, enemies trained in the warfare of the
wilderness poured their fire upon the retiring troops It
seemed to one of the officers engaged in that memora])le
fight as if the skies rained down foes upon them, unseen
foes only made known by the accuracy of their marksman-
ship and the pertinacity of their veiled pursuit. All the
way from Concord the retiring troops fought in vain with
an enemy that was seldom seen, but whose presence was
everywhere manifested by the precision of his aim and the
tale of victims that followed each volley. The retreat was
becoming: a rout when reinforcements sent out from Bos-
ton under the command of Lord Percy stayed an actual
stampede. But it could not stay the retreat nor avert
defeat. T^ord Percy, who had marched out with his bands
playing " Yankee Doodle," in mockery of the Americans,
had to retreat in his turn with no mocking music, carry-
ing with him the remnant of the invaders of Concord. He

1776. MILITARY SUCCESSES OF THE COLONISTS. 175

and his force did not get within touch of Boston and the
protection of the guns of the fleet a moment too soon.
Had a large body of insurgents, who came hurrying in to
help their brethren, arrived on the field a little earlier.
Lord Percy and his command must inevitably have been
made prisoners of war. As it was, this one day's business
had given success and the confidence that comes of success
to the raw colonists, and had inflicted a crushing defeat
upon a body of soldiers who had been led to believe that
the sight of their scarlet coats would act like a charm to
tame their untutored opponents.

Gage only recovered from the shock of this disaster to
realize that Boston was invested by an insurgent army.
The victors of the fight and flight from Concord were
rapidly reinforced by bodies of men from all parts of the
country ; their ranks were hourly swelled by levies roughly
armed but stubbornly resolved. Unpleasant facts forced
themselves thick and fast upon Gage's notice. But yes-
terday, as it were, he had imagined that the mere presence
of the forces under his command was sufficient to overaAve
the colonists and settle any show of insubordination for-
ever; to-day he had to swallow in shame and anger a stag-
gering defeat. Still Gage did nothing and his enemies ac-
cumulated. Royal reinforcements arrived under Bur-
goyne, Clinton, and Howe, to do nothing in their turn.
But the peasants they despised were not idle and would
not allow them to be idle. The English general woke up
one morning to find that under cover of night an impor-
tant point of vantage overlooking the town of Boston had
been occupied and roughly fortified by the rebels. The
citizen soldiers who had gathered together to defend their
liberties had stolen a march upon the English general.
They had occupied the rising ground of Breed Hill, below
Bunker's Hill, on the Charlestown side of the Charles
River, and had hurriedly intrenched themselves there be-
hind rude but efficient earthworks. Gage was resolved that
the rebels should not remain long in their new position.
Chance might have allotted them a scratch victory over a
small body of men taken unawares in unfamiliar country

176 A UlSTOKV UF TUE FuLK GKUKGES. ch. liv.

and by unfamiliar methods of fighting. But here was a
business familiar to the British soldier; here was work
that he did well and that he loved to do. If the colonists
really believed that they could hold Breed Hill against
troops with whom the taking by storm of strong positions
was a tradition, so much the worse for them. The order
was given that the rebels must be cleared away from Breed
Hill at once, and the welcome task was given to Lord
Howe, in command of the flower of the forces in Boston.
U is probable that Howe felt some pity for the rash and
foolhardy men whose hopes it was his duty and his deter-
mination to destroy. Confident that the enterprise would
be as brief as it must be decisive, Howe prepared to as-
sault, and the battle of Breed Hill began.

The Breed Hill battle is one of the strangest and one of
the bravest fights ever fought by men. On the one side
were some hundreds of simple citizens, civilians, skilled as
individuals in the use of the gun, and accustomed as
volunteers, militia, and minute-men to something that
might pass for drill and manoeuvre, officered and general-
led by men who, like Warren and Greene, knew warfare
only by the bookish theoric, or by men who, like Putnam
and Pomeroy, had taken their baptism of fire and blood
in frontier struggles with wild beast and wilder Indian.
On the other side were some thousands of the finest troops
in the world, in whose ranks victory was a custom, on
whose banners the names of famous battles blazed. They
were well trained, well armed, well equipped. They moved
at the word of command with the monotonous precision
and perfection of a machine. They were led by ofTicers
whose temper had been tested again and again in the sharp
experiences of war, men to whom the thought of defeat was
as unfamiliar as the thought of fear. The contrast be-
tween the two opposing forces was vividly striking in the
very habiliments of the opponents. The men who were
massed behind the breastworks of Breed Hill were inno-
cent of uniform, of the bright attire that makes the sol-
dier's life alluring, innocent even of any distinction be-
tween officer and private, or, if the words seem too formal

1775. THE BATTLE OF BREED HILL. 177

for so raw a force, between the men who were in command
and the men who were commanded. The soldiers who were
massed below, the force whose duty it was to march
up the hill and sweep away the handful in hodden gray
and black broadcloth who held it, glittered with all the
bravery of color dear to the British army. Splendid in
scarlet and white and gold, every buckle shining, every belt
and bandolier as brightly clean as pipeclay could make it,
the little army under Howe's command would have done
credit to a parade in the Park or a field day at Windsor.
The one side was as sad and sombre as a Puritan prayer-
meeting; the other glowed with all the color and warmth
of a military pageant. The holders of the hill had come
from their farms and their fields in the homely working
clothes they wore as they followed the plough or tended
their cattle ; the townsmen among them came in the decent
civic suits they wore behind their desks or counters. Few
men's weapons were fellows in that roughly armed array.
Each militant citizen carried his own gun, some favorite
weapon, familiar from long practice in fowling, or from
frequent service further afield against the bear, the panther,
and the wolf. Some of the flint-locks were enormously
long; many of them would have seemed extremely old-
fashioned to an ordnance officer. But every gun was like
an additional limb to those practised marksmen, who knew
little of firing in platoons, but everything of the patient ac-
curacy which gives the backwoodsman his unerring aim.
The assailants carried the latest weapons approved of by
the War Office, and manipulated them with the faultless
unison and unswerving harmony that would have com-
pelled the compliments of a commander-in-chief at a re-
view. At the top of the hill were some sixteen hundred
men, a mob of undisciplined sharpshooters, few of whom
liad ever fired a shot in organized warfare. At the bot-
tom of the hill were some four thousand of the finest
troops in the world, stiffened with all the strength that
prestige and practice could give them. It did not seem
on the face of it a very eqiial combat; it did not seem to
the English generals that it ought to take very long to

178 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. liv.

march from tlie bottom to the top of the hill and make
short work of the mutinous peasants on its summit. The
best indeed that the mutinous peasants could hope for
when the British were upon them was to be shot or bayo-
neted as quickly as possible, for the terms of Gage's procla-
mation directly threatened with the gallows every rebel
taken with arms in his hands.

But at Breed Hill, as at Concord, the unexpected came
to pass. The British troops were unable to endure the
destructive tire of the colonists. Again and again they
advanced over the incline as calmly as if on parade ; again
and again they reeled backward with shattered ranks,
leaving grim piles of dead upon the fire-swept slope. The
execution was terrible ; regiments that marched up the hill
as if to certain victory fell back from it a mere remnant
of themselves, leaving most of their men and almost all
their officers behind. For awhile the fight was a succession
of catastrophes to the force under Howe's command. It
looked as if Breed Hill w^ould never be taken. But there
came a time when the men who held it could hold it no
longer. Their supply of powder began to run out, and
with their means of keeping up their fire their power of
holding their position came to an end. Then came a last
charge of Howe's rallied forces, this time in the lightest
of marching array, a last volley from behind the earth-
works, and Breed Hill was in the hands of the British.
It was captured at the last without much l:)loodshed, with-
out much loss to its garrison. The smoke hung so thick
about the enclosure where the rebels had held their own so
long and so well that it was not easy for the bayonets of
the conquerors to do much execution, and the defenders
of Breed Hill slipped away for the most part under cover
of the mist they themselves had made. Indeed, there was
little inclination for pursuit on the part of the victors.
They had done what they had been set to do, but they had
done it at a cost which for the time made it impossible for
them to attempt to pursue an advantage so dearly bought.
They did not, could not know the strength of their enemy;
they were content to hold the ground which had been won

17V5. THE CONTINENTAL ARMY. 179

with such a fearful waste of British blood. Breed Hill
was a nominal victory for the King; it was a real victory
for the rebels, who had shown what an undisciplined force,
composed of farmers, trappers, lawyers, shopkeepers, and
divines, could do against the finest troops in the world.

Already insurgent America had an army, and an army
of investment. The rebels, whom Gage affected to despise
almost as much as he was himself despised by General
Burgoyne, were massed in numbers unknown to the loyal-
ists before Boston, and the English soldiers were cooped up
in the city they had crossed the seas to command. The
colonial army was rude and rough, but earnest and reso-
lute, and it had evolved generals of its own making, rough
and rude as itself, but able, daring, and fearless. Israel
Putnam, who killed a wolf once with his own hands in
his wild youth, gripping it by the throat till he had choked
its life out, had come to fight against the flag beneath
which he had fought so well in the French wars. Na-
thaniel Greene had flung down his military books and
caught up the sword, had abandoned the theory for the
practice, and was beginning to make a name. Benedict
Arnold, after a life as varied, as shady, and as adventurous
as that of any picaroon in a Spanish story, leaped into
fame as a daring spirit by the way in which he and Ethan
Allen, at the head of a mixed force of Vermonters and
New Englanders, had taken Fort Ticonderoga, on the
great lakes, by surprise, and had endowed the dawning
army with its captured cannon. Prescott, the hero of
Breed Hill, was now a veteran soldier; and the names of
Artemas Ward, of Schuyler, of Pomeroy, Heath and
Thomas, Sullivan and Montgomery, Wooster and Spencer
were becoming more than mere names to Englishmen in
Boston and in London. Two Englishmen held rank as
generals in the crude colonial army — the adventurer
Charles Lee, whom some foolish people believed to be the
real Junius, and Horatio Gates. There were few thor-
oughly worthless men in the young army, but it is painful
to record that Lee and Gates were eminent among them.
These were the generals of what was now to be called the

180 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ce. liv.

Continental Army. Happy in most of them, happy in
much, it was happiest of all in this: that it had for its
commander-in-chief the noblest man, who was to prove
the greatest soldier, then living in the world.

When Braddock died, the hero of a hopeless fight and the
martyr of his own folly, the funeral service was read over
liis body by the young Virginian soldier who had fought
by his side and had warned him against his rashness. To
men in later years there seemed to be something prophetic,
with the blended irony and pathos of prophecy, in the
picture of that dead Englishman, his scarlet coat torn and
bloody with so many wounds, lying in his grave while his
American lieutenant read over him the words that com-
mitted so much wasted courage to the earth. At the time
and hour the thing signified no more than the price of a
petty victory of allied French and Indians, which the Vir-
ginian soldier was soon to avenge. After planting the
banner of King George on the ruins of Fort Duquesne,
Captain Washington sheathed his sword and retired from
military into civil life, with as little likelihood as desire
of ever carrying arms again. All he asked and all he an-
ticipated was to live the tranquil life of a comfortable
colonial gentleman. After a youth that had been vexed
by many experiences of the passion of love he had married
happily and wisely, and had settled down to a gracious
rural life at Mount Vernon, on the banks of the Potomac
Eiver. He wished no better than to be a country gentleman,
with a country gentleman's pleasures and pursuits — farm-
ing, hunting, fishing — with a country gentleman's friend-
ships for neighbors like himself. He was a dutiful servant
of his State; he was a member of the Virginia Houses of
Burgesses for fifteen years after the fall of Fort Duquesne,
and though he seldom played any part in debate he com-
manded the confidence and the esteem of his colleagues
and of his fellow-citizens. He lived and enjoj^ed a peace-
ful, honorable, useful, uneventful life, and might have
lived it to its end in dignified obscurity if a rash and head-
strong sovereign over-seas had not found ministers too
servile or too foolish to say him nay.

1775. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 181

The Continental Congress, conscious of Washington's
ability, offered him the command of its improvised army.
Washington accepted the duty, well aware of its gravity,
its danger, its awful responsibility. He refused any pay
beyond his actual expenses, and he entered upon a struggle
whose difficulties were not all or nearly all due to the
enemy in the sternest and noblest sense of duty to his
countrymen and to the principles of liberty. At first, in his
own words, he loathed the idea of independence. He only
took up arms to defend cherished rights; the day was not
yet, though the day was not far off, when the Virginian
soldier would renounce his allegiance to the King whose
commission he had carried and to the country from which
his race stemmed. Washington's military genius soon
showed itself in the use he made of the loose, incoherent,
disorganized mass of men which was called the Continental
Army. It was fortunate for the Continental cause that the
English generals, penned up within the walls of Boston,
had little idea of the obstacles Washington had to over-
come, the opposition he had to encounter, the sore straits
to which the want of everything essential to a besieging
army drove him. But his indomitable courage, his unfail-
ing coolness, his unconquerable resource overcame a sea of
troubles that might well have swept even a strong man
and a brave soldier off his feet. With regiment after regi-
ment quietly disbanding as their term of service expired;
with a plentiful lack of powder, of arms, of provisions, of
uniforms; w^ith a force that at moments threatened to dis-
solve into nothingness and leave him with a handful of
generals alone beneath his insurgent flag, Washington
never allowed the enemy, and seldom allowed a friend, to
guess how near at times he came to despair. He raised
troops somehow; he got provisions somehow; somehow he
managed to o])tain powder ; somehow he managed to obtain
arms. The want of weapons was so great that many
bodies of men were only provided with pikes, and that
Franklin was driven to suggest, and partly in a spirit of
humanity, that American farmers fighting for their liberty
should be armed with the bows and arrows of the red

182 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. uv.

men, iiiul should strive to renew upon the fields of Massa-
chusetts the successes of their ancestors, the yeomen of
Agincourt, with their clothyard shafts.

The generals shut up in Boston knew nothing of the
cares that harassed the mind of Washington. All they knew
was that they were closely heleaguered; that they were
cooped up in Boston by a large if irregular army, and that
they could not get out. They affected, of course, to de-
spise their enemy. At the private theatricals which were
given to divert the enforced leisure of Lord Howe an actor
who came on as a caricature of Washington, attired like a
military scarecrow, never failed to please. Burgoyne was
confident that sooner or later he could find that " elbow-
room " the ungratified desire for which has served to im-
mortalize his name. But neither Howe nor Burgoyne nor
any one else could dissipate the ragged regiments that in-
vested Boston, nor baffle the plans of the great soldier
who commanded them. For nearly a year the world saw
with wonder the spectacle of an English army confined in
Boston, and an English fleet riding idly in the Charles
River. Then the end came. AVashington, closing in, of-
fered Lord Howe, the English general then in command,
the choice of evacuation or bombardment. The English
general chose the former. The royal troops withdrew from
Boston, taking with them the loyalist families who had
thrown in their lot with the King's cause. The English
ships that sailed from Boston were terribly overcrowded
with the number of refugees who preferred flight, with all
its attendant sorrows, to remaining in a rebellious country.
The English fleet sailed away from Boston and the Con-
tinental Army marched in. So far the cause of King
George was going very badly indeed ; so far the rebellious
colonists had failed to justify the confident prophecies
of Tjord Sandwich. With any other king and with any
other ministers one such year's work would have been
enough at least to induce them to reconsider their position.
But the King was George the Third, and his ministers
were what they were, and it was resolved that the war
must go on.

1775-81. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 183

The war did go on. It lasted for five years more, in
spite of the protests of ever}^ truly patriotic Englishman,
in spite of proof after proof that nothing could break the
spirit or crush the courage of the colonists. While in Eng-
land Fox arrayed himself in the blue and buff that com-
posed the uniform of the Continental Army, while the
Duke of Richmond made it a point to speak, and with ex-
cellent reason, of the Continental Army as " our army,"
while the eloquence of Chatham and the eloquence of
Burke were launched in vain against campaigns as idle as
they were infamous, the war went stubbornly on. The
King and his ministers proposed new measures of repres-
sion and expended vast sums in the purchase of Hessian
regiments to dragoon the defiant colonists. Soon all pre-
tence of loyalty had to be abandoned by the Americans.
The statue of King George was dragged from its place of
honor in Bowling Green, New York, and run into bullets
to be used against his German levies. In the summer
that followed the evacuation of Boston the rebellious
colonies proclaimed their independence in the most
memorable declaration of a people's right ever made by
men. This was in 1776. The disastrous war had still five
years to run.

The fortunes of the war varied. The early victories of
the Americans were followed by a series of defeats which
left Philadelphia in the hands of the British, and which
would have broken the heart of any man of less heroic
mould than Washington. Hope revived with a series of
Continental victories. Aid came to America from abroad.
France, Germany, Poland sent stout soldiers to fight for
freedom — Lafayette, Von Steuben, Kosciusko. The Eng-
lish general Burgoyne surrendered with all his army at
Saratoga. After the winter of 1777, when Washington
and his army suffered all the rigors of Valley Forge,
France acknowledged the independence of America, the
British evacuated Philadelphia, and Paul Jones made him-
self forever famous by the way in which he and his ship
" Le Bonhomme Eichard,'' carried the American war to
the coast of England. Again came colonial reverses. A

184 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. uv.

steady siifcossion of English successes scarcely struck so
hard a blow at the Continental cause as the treason of
Benedict Arnold, who entered into negotiations with the
British to betray his command. Washington had trusted
and loved Arnold like a brother. " Whom can I trust
now?-' he asked in momentary despair when the capture
of an English officer, Major Andre, and the flight of Bene-
dict Arnold to the British lines revealed to him an un-
dreamed-of treason which had threatened to undermine
the colonial cause. But Benedict Arnold's crime had for
its only result the death of a better man than himself, of
Major Andre, who had by the laws of war to suffer death
as a spy. There were other traitors and semi-traitors in
the American army : Lee was certainly the first ; Gates
was almost, if not quite, the second. But Lee and Gates
failed to do the mischief to which their base jealousy of
Washington prompted them. The right cause triumphed.
In 1781 another British army surrendered, the army of
Cornwallis, at Yorktown. Even North was forced to
recognize that this crushing disaster to the royal hopes and
the royal arms practically ended the war. It w^as sus-
pended in the following year, and in 1783, after much
negotiation, which at times threatened to come to nothing,
a treaty of peace was signed in France, and the American
Republic took its place among the nations of the earth.
It was for these negotiations that Franklin, as we have
said, brought out from its obscurity that gala suit which
he had worn for the last time when he stood at the bar of
the House of Commons and listened to the brutal and
foolish assaults of Wedderburn. Many days had passed
since that day.

So ended one of the most unjust and one of the most
foolish wars ever waged by England. It must never be
forgotten that the war was in no sense an English war.
The English people as a whole had then no voice to ex-
press itself one way or the other. Of those Englishmen
whose voices had to be heard, the best and the wisest were
as angry in their denunciations of the crime of the King
and the King's ministers, and as cordial in their admira-

1778. DEATH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 185

tion of Washington and his companions, as if they had
been members of that Continental Congress which first
in Philadelphia proclaimed the existence of a new nation.
The fatal war which had cost the English King the loss
of his greatest colonies, which had spilt a vast amount of
blood and wasted a vast amount of treasure in order to
call into being a strong and naturally resentful rival to the
power of England, must be said also to have cost the life
of the greatest English statesman of the century. The
genius of Chatham had never been more nobly employed
than in protesting with all the splendor of its eloquence
against the unjust war upon the Americans and the un-
just deeds which had heralded the war. But time, that
had only swelled the ranks of the wise and sane who
thought as Chatham had thought and found their own
utterance from the fire of his words, had wrought a change
in the attitude of a great statesman. Harassed by the
disease that racked his body, the mind of Chatham had
altered. The noble views that he had maintained in de-
fiance of a headstrong king and a corrupt ministry had
changed in the face of the succession of calamities that
had fallen upon his country. The success that he had de-
sired for the insurgent arms had been accorded, and he
came to despair at the consequence of that success. He had
been granted his heart's desire in full measure, and the
gratification choked him. When it came to be a ques-
tion of conceding to the colonists that formal recognition
of an independence which they had already won, the in-
tellect of Chatham revolted against the policy himself had
fostered. He forgot or he forswore the principles which
animated Burke, which animated Fox, which guided the
course of Rockingham and inspired the utterances of Rich-
mond. All he could see was an England humiliated by
many defeats, an England threatened by many terrible
alliances, and in the face of humiliation and of menace
he forgot that both alike were the inevitable, the well-
deserved fruit of injustice. Remembering that he had
helped to make England great, he refused to remember
that England would have been still greater if she had fol-

186 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. Lir.

lowed the honorable course his wisdom had made plain to
her. His proud, unhappy spirit could not consent to
her dismemberment, a dismemberment which seemed to
his fading intellect to be the equivalent to her ruin. He
came from his sick bed, a ghastly image of decay, to offer
the desperate protest of a dying man against surrender
to the mutiny his own eloquence had fanned. " Come the
four quarters of the world in arms and we will shock
them." The spirit of Faulconbridge was strong in the
ruined body of the statesman who was carried to his seat
in the House of Lords by the son who bore his name and
by the Lord Mahon who had married his daughter. His
eagle face was turned against the men who had been his
colleagues. His trembling hand pointed at them in con-
demnation. He gasped out a few sentences, almost inar-
ticulate, almost inaudible, before he reeled in a fit upon
the arms of those about him. He was carried from the
House ; he was carried to Hayes, and at Hayes a few weeks
later the great career came to an end. His last battle was
at least heroic. If his stroke was struck on the wrong side
and for a cause his prime had done so much to baffle, it
is not necessary to attribute his perversion entirely to the
insidious ravages of the malady that had clouded his whole
life. He could not bear to see the countrv that was in
so eminent and so intimate a sense his country yield even
to claims that were conspicuously right and just at the
command of a league between England's rebellious chil-
dren and England's enemy, France. There broke his
mighty heart. In Chatham England lost one of the great-
est of her statesmen, one of the most splendid of her sons.
His life was passionately devoted to his country, his career
one long struggle against a peculiarly bigoted, stubborn,
and unwise King. Always hated by his enemies, often
misunderstood by his friends, he showed while he lived a
steadfast front alike against the enemies of England
abroad and those worse enemies of England at home who
filled the throne and the places about the throne. He was
buried with great pomp and honor at Westminster, leaving
behind him not merely the memory of an illustrious name.

1781. ENGLAND AND HER LOST COLONIES. 187

but a name that the second generation was still to make
illustrious.

The folly of the King and the servility of his ministers
resulted in what seemed to be almost an irredeemable
catastrophe for England. Even those Englishmen who
most sympathized with the struggle for American inde-
pendence could not but feel a regret that men who might
have been among the most glorious citizens of a great and
united empire should be thus recklessly forced into an
enmity that had deprived England of its most splendid
possessions. The enemies of England, many and eager,
believed her day was done, that her sun was setting, that
neither her power nor her prestige would ever recover
from the succession of disasters that began at Lexington
and that ended in Paris. But the vitality of the country
was too great to be seriously impaired even by the loss of
the American colonies. From a blow that might well have
been little less than fatal the country recovered with a
readiness and a rapidity that was amazing. Men who in
their youth heard their elders speak with despair of the
calamity that had befallen their country lived to old age
to learn that the wound was not incurable, and that Eng-
land was greater, richer, prouder, and more powerful than
she had ever been before. If she had lost the American
colonies she had learned a lesson in the loss. The blow
that might have stunned only served to rouse her to a
greater sense of her danger and a livelier consciousness of
her duty. If she had suffered much from rashness she was
not going to suffer more from inaction, and it seemed as if
every source of strength in the kingdom knit itself together
in the common purpose of showing to the world that Eng-
land still was England, although a part of her empire had
passed away from her forever. There was no glory to be
got for England out of the American war; it was wrong
from first to last, wrong, unjust, and foolish, but when it
ended it did not find her crippled, nor did it leave her
permanently enfeebled in temper or in strength.

We may gather some idea of what risk wise men felt
they were running from a famous speech of Edmund

188 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. liv.

Burke. He was striving to stay the determination of the
Ministry to declare war upon tlie American colonies. He
wished his hearers to appreciate the progress that America
had made within living memory. He called imaginatiqn
to his aid. He spoke of a statesman then living in the late
evening of an honorable life. He pictured that statesman
in the promise of his early dawn, saluted by the angel of
his auspicious youth, and given the power to see into the
future, so far as to the hour when Burke was speaking.
*' What," said Burke, " if while he was gazing with ad-
miration on the then commercial grandeur of England
the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce
visible in the mass of the nation's interest, and should tell
him, ' Young man, there is America, which at this day
serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of
savage men and uncouth manners, yet before you taste of
death will show itself equal to the whole of that commerce
which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever Eng-
land has been growing to by a progressive increase of im-
provement, brought in by varieties of people, hy succes-
sion of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in
a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much
added to her by America in the course of a single life !' If
this state of his country had been foretold to him, would
it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth and all
the fervid glow of enthusiasm to make him believe it?
Fortunate man, he has lived to see it." If the genius of
prophecy could have stood by Burke's shoulder then, and
illuminated his noble soul with the knowledge that is the
common possession of mankind to-day, would it not have
required all the sanguine credulity, all the divine enthusi-
asm of genius to make him believe it?

The war that gave the world a new nation and a republic
greater than Rome added one of the greatest names, and
perhaps the noblest name, to the roll-call of the great cap-
tains of the earth. No soldier of all those that the eyes
of Dante discerned in the first circle, not even " Caesar,
all armored with gerfalcon eyes," adorns the annals of
antiquity more than George Washington illuminates the

1732-99. THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON. 189

last quarter of the eigliteenih century. His splendid
strength, his sweet austerity, his proud patience are hardly
to be rivalled in the previous history of humanity, and
have perhaps only been rivalled since his day by children
of the same continent and of the same southern soil, who
sacrificed qualities much akin to his own on a cause that,
unlike his, was not the cause of freedom. " First in
peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his country-
men." The phrase of Lee has been worn threadbare with
iteration since it was first uttered, but it always rings true
of the high-minded, unfaltering soldier and honorable,
simple gentleman w^hose genius in w^ar and whose modesty
in peace made the republic of America an enduring fact in
history. Long after the great soldier and good man had
been laid to rest an English poet did him justice, and no
more than justice, by writing that " the first, the last, the
best, the Cincinnatus of the West, whom envy dared not
hate, bequeathed the name of Washington to make man
blush there was but one." Washins^ton was made the first
President of the American Republic in 1789, after reso-
lutely resisting all suggestions to make himself king of the
new commonwealth. He served for two terms of four
3^ears each, and then retired into private life, unembittered
by the cruel and stupid ingratitude of the few and un-
spoiled by the reasoned and grateful homage of the many.
He died in 1799 in his quiet home in Mount Vernon, while
the King who still regarded him as a rebel had many years
of his unquiet reign to live.

190 A UISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

CHAPTER LV.

THE GORDON RIOTS.

In the year 1778 Sir George Savile earned for himself
an honorable distinction by passing his measure for the
relief of Koman Catholics. Sir George Savile was a man
of advanced views; he fought gallantly in the House of
Commons through five successive Parliaments, in which
he represented York County, for all measures which he
believed to be sincerely patriotic, and against all measures
which he believed to be opposed to the honorable interests
of his country. He gained the laurel of praise from Burke,
who, in one of his famous Bristol speeches, spoke of him
as a true genius, " with an understanding vigorous, acute,
relined, distinguishing even to excess; and illuminated
with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of
imagination." The man whom Burke thus generously
praised deserved the praises. He strove earnestly against
the American war. He enthusiastically supported Pitt's
motion in 1783 for a reform in Parliament. He was the
author of an admirable Bill for the Limitation of the
Claims of the Crown upon Landed Estates. But his name
is chiefly associated with his Bill for Catholic Relief, both
because of the excellent purpose of the measure itself, and
because of the remarkable outburst of fanaticism which
followed it.

Sir George Savile's measure did away with certain re-
strictions, certain barbarous restrictions, as they now seem,
upon English subjects professing the Catholic faith. The
famous Act of the eleventh and twelfth years of King
William the Third, the Act known as the Act for the Eur-
ther Preventing the Growth of Popery, had instituted
certain very harsh penal enactments against Catholics.

1778-80. SIR GEORGE SAVILE'S CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 191

That Act Sir George Savile proposed largely to repeal.
This was a measure of relief of no great magnitude, but it
did at least recognize the common humanity of Catholic
Englishmen with Protestant Englishmen; it did at least
allow to Catholic Englishmen some of the dearest and
most obvious rights of citizenship. The savage penal laws
which for so long afflicted the sister island of Ireland were
tempered and abrogated in this measure as far as England
was concerned, and rujnor spread it abroad that a similar
relief was soon to be extended to the Catholics of Scotland.
Straightway a Bill which had passed both Houses without
a single negative aroused the fiercest opposition beyond
the Border. The announcement of the recall of the Stu-
arts could not have spread a greater panic through the
ranks of the Scottish Protestants. A violent agitation
was set on foot, an agitation which could not have been
more violent if the Highlanders had once again been at
the gates of Edinburgh. An alarmist spirit spread abroad.
All manner of associations and societies were called into
being for the defence of a faith which was not menaced.
Committees were appointed to inflame faction and serve
as the rallying points of bigotry. Sectarian books and
pamphlets of the most exaggerated and alarming kind
were sown broadcast all over the countrv. The result of
this kind of agitation showed itself in a religious persecu-
tion, which gradually developed into a religious war. The
unfortunate Catholic residents in Edinburgh, in Glasgow,
and in other great Scottish towns found themselves sud-
denly the victims of savage violence at the hands of mobs
incited by the inflammatory utterances and the inflam-
matory propaganda of the Protestant committees. In the
face of the disorder which a suggestion of mercy aroused
in Scotland, the Government seemed to take fright, and
to abandon all thought of extending the clemencv of the
Relief Bill to Scotland.

But the Scottish agitation against the Catholics soon
spread across the Border, soon directed itself, not against
the imaginary Bill which it might be the intention of the
Government to pass, but against the actual Bill which the

192 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

Government had passed for the benefit of English Catho-
lics. The bigoted bodies, societies, and conmiittees iu Scot-
land soon found their parallels in England. The Eng-
lish J'rotestant Association rose into being like some sud-
den evocation of a wizard, and chose for its head and leader
the num who had made himself conspicuous as the head
and leader of the movement in Scotland — Lord George
Gordon.

i^ord George Gordon lives forever, a familiar figure in
the minds of the English-speaking race, thanks to the pict-
ure drawn by Charles Dickens. Englishmen know, as
they know the face of a friend, the ominous figure " about
the middle height, of a slender make and sallow com-
plexion, with an aquiline nose, and long hair of a reddish
brown, combed perfectly straight and smooth about his
ears and slightly powdered, but without the faintest ves-
tige of a curl." It is a living portrait of that solemn gen-
tleman in the suit of soberest black, with those bright large
eyes in which insanity burned, " eyes which betrayed a
restlessness of thought and purpose, singularly at variance
with the studied composure and sobriety of his mien, and
with his quaint and sad apparel." It fits well with all that
we know of Lord George Gordon to learn that there was
nothing fierce or cruel in his face, whose mildness and
wliose melancholy were chiefly varied by a haunting air
of " indefinable uneasiness, which infected those who
looked upon him and filled them with a kind of pity for
the man: though why it did so they would have had some
trouble to explain." Such was the strange fanatic whose
name was destined to be blown for a season throughout
England, who was fated to stand for a moment visible in
the eyes of all men, the idol of intolerance, the apostle of
violence, of murder, and of fire, and then to fall most
pitiably, most pitifully into the dust.

Lord George Gordon was still a young man when he
became leader of the anti-Catholic agitation. He would
seem in our days a very young man, for, as he was born
in 1750, he was only thirty when the agitation reached its
height. But a man of thirty was counted older than he

1750-80. LORD GEORGE GORDON. 193

would not be reckoned, in an epoch when it was possible
for a young man just come of age to lead the House of
Commons. Lord George Gordon had led a somewhat
varied life. He had been in the navy, and had left the
service from pique, while the American war was still in
Its earliest stages, in consequence of a quarrel with Lord
Sandwich concerning promotion. The restless energy
which he could no longer dedicate to active service he re-
solved most unhappily to devote to political life. He en-
tered Parliament as the representative of the borough of
Ludgershall, and soon earned for himself a considerable
notoriety in Westminster. He had very fierce opinions;
he attacked everybody and everything; his vehemence and
vituperation were seasoned with a kind of wit, and he made
himself, if not a power, at least an important factor in the
House of Commons. Indeed, it passed into a kind of
proverb at St. Stephen's that there were three parties in the
State — the Ministr}^, the Opposition, and Lord George
Gordon. Parliament had seen before, and has seen since,
many a politician fighting thus like Hal o' the W}Tid for
his own hand, but no one so influential for a season or so
pernicious in his influence as Lord George Gordon.

It seems quite clear to those who review so strange a
career at this distance of time that Lord George Gordon
was of deranged intellect. It does not need the alleged
contrast between his professions and his practice to en-
force this conclusion. jMany men have affected the re-
ligious habit and the religious bearing while their lives
were privately profligate without deserving to be called
insane except in the sense in which any criminal excess
may be regarded pathologically as a proof of madness.
Even if it were true that the long-haired and black-hab-
ited George Gordon were the debauched profligate that
Hannah More and Horace Walpole maintained him to
be, he might find fellow-sinners of unquestioned sanity.
But the conduct of his public life goes to prove that his
wits were diseased. His behavior in the House, when it
was not intolerably tedious, was characterized by a

grotesque buffoonery which men looked upon as laughable
VOL. m. — 7

104 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

or pitiable according to their tempers, but which they had
not yet learned to look upon as dangerous. When he de-
nounced the King as a Papist, when he declared that the
time would come when George Gordon would be able to
dictate to the Crown and Parliament, when he occasionally
interrupted his wild utterances to break into Hoods of tears,
men sneered or yawned or laughed. They were soon to
learn that the man was something more than divertingly
contemptible.

In the excitement that followed on the passing of the
relief measure Lord George Gordon found his opportunity
for being actively noxious. A gloomy fanaticism in Scot-
land took fire at the fear lest kindred relief should be ex-
tended to the North Briton, and, as we have said, displayed
itself in savage speech and savage deed. In the press and
from the pulpit denunciations of the Catholics streamed.
The Synod of Glasgow solemnly resolved that it would op-
pose any Bill brought into Parliament in favor of Scottish
Catholics. In Edinburah and in Glasgow houses were
wrecked and lives menaced. In Glasgow a worthy potter,
^Ir. Bagnal, who had brought from Staffordshire its fa-
mous art, had his property wholly destroyed. In Edin-
burgh the house of a Catholic priest was wrecked in obe-
dience to a brutal handbill which called upon its readers to
*' take it as a warning to meet at Leith Wynd, on Wednes-
day next, in the evening, to pull down that pillar of
popery lately erected there." The " pillar of popery " was
the dwelling occupied by the priest, which was duly
wrecked in obedience to the bidding of the nameless
" Protestant " who signed the manifesto. It is curious to
note a postscriptum to the handbill, which ran thus:
*' Please to read this carefully, keep it clean, and drop it
somewhere else. For Kino; and countrv. — Unity." The
means which were adopted to spread fanaticism in Scot-
land were carefully followed when the time came for car-
rying the agitation into England.

It was indeed not necessary to be a Catholic to call down
the fury of fanatical persecution. To have expressed any
sympathy for Catholicism, to have taken part in any way.

1118-SO. THE ENGLISH "PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION." 195

uo matter how indirect, in the advocacy of the relief
measure, was enough to mark men out for vengeance. Dr.
Robertson, the historian, was threatened because he advo-
cated tolerance in religious matters. A lawyer named
Crosbie was denounced merely because he had in the way
of his regular business drawn up the Bill intended for
Parliament. It was inevitable that the action of intol-
erance in Scotland should come before the notice of Par-
liament. Wilkes, always ostentatious in the cause of lib-
erty, called upon Dundas to bring in his relief measure
for Scotland. When Dundas declared that it was better
to delay the m.easure until cooler judgment might prevail,
Wilkes denounced him for allowing Parliament to truckle
to riot, and the denunciation found support in the actions
of Burke and of Fox. Lord George Gordon had found his
opportunity. He assailed Fox; he assailed Burke, He
declared that every non-Catholic in Scotland was ready
to rise in arms against Catholic relief, and that the rebels
had chosen him for their leader. He raged and vapored
and threatened on the floor of the House. But he did
more than rage and vapor and threaten. Whether of his
own motion, or prompted by others, he formed a " Protes-
tant Association " in England. Of this, as of the similar
Scottish Association, he was declared the head, and this
accumulation of honors wholly overthrew his intelligence.
An amiable writer has declared that " it would be much
beneath the dignity of history to record the excesses of so
coarse a fanatic but for the fatal consequences with which
they were attended." The amiable defender of a detest-
able phrase does not understand that it was the excesses
of the fanatic that led to the fatal consequences, and that
Lord George Gordon, as the ostensible head and conspicu-
ous cause of one of the gravest events of the history of
England in the eighteenth century, is in no sense beneath
the " dignity of history." The business of history is with
him and with such as he, as well as with the statelier,
austerer figures who sanely shape the destinies of the State.
There was plenty of fanaticism abroad in England ; it was
reserved for Lord George Gordon to bring it together into

196 A IllSTORV OF THE FOUR GEOR(;KS. ch. lv.

a single body, to organize it, and to employ its force with
a terrible if temporary success. He issued an insane procla-
nuition calling upon men to unite against Catholicism; he
lield a great meeting of the Protestant Association at
(.^oaehmakers' Hall, at which with a kind of Bedlamite
brilliancy he raved against Catholicism and lashed the
])assions of his hearers to delirium. It was resolved to
liold a huge meeting of the Protestant Association in St.
(George's Fields on June 2. At its head Lord George Gor-
don was to proceed to the House of Commons and deliver
the petition against Catholic relief. All stanch Protestants
were to wear blue cockades in their hats to mark out the
faithful from the unfaithful.

On June 2, 1780, the meeting was held. Lord George
Gordon had announced in his speech at the Coachmakers'
Hall that he would not deliver the petition if the meeting
were less than twenty thousand strong. The number of
Lord George's limit was enormously exceeded. It is said
that at least sixty thousand persons were present in St.
George's Fields on the appointed day, and some chroni-
clers compute the number at nearer one hundred thousand
than sixty thousand. It is curious to note in passing that
a Roman Catholic cathedral stands now on the very site
where this meeting was held. After the meeting had
assembled it started to march six abreast to Westminster.
The hand of the great romancer who has made George
Gordon live has renewed that memorable day, with its
noise, its tumult, its tossing banners, its shouted party
cries, its chanted hymns, its military evolutions, its insane
enthusiasms, its dangerous latent passions. Gibbon, who
M^as then a member of the House of Commons, declared
that the assemblage seemed to him as if forty thousand
Puritans of the days of Cromwell had started from their
graves. The forty thousand Puritans were escorted by and
incorporated with a still greater body of all the ruffianism
and scoundrelism that a great city can contribute to any
scene of popular agitation. What fanaticism inspired
rowdyism was more than ready to profit by. The march
to AVestminster and the arrival at Westminster form one of

1780. THE LORD GEORGE GORDON RIOTS. 197

the wildest episodes in the history of London. By three
different routes the blue-cockaded petitioners proceeded
to Westminster, and rallied in the large open spaces then
existing in front of the Houses of Parliament. The innate
lawlessness of the assemblage soon manifested itself in a
series of attacks upon the members of both Houses who
were endeavoring to make their way through the press to
their respective Chambers. It is one more example of the
eternal irony of history that, while the mob was buffeting
members of the Lower House, and doing its best to murder
members of the Upper House, while a merciless intolerance
was rapidly degenerating into a merciless disorder, the
Duke of Kichmond was wholly absorbed in a speech in
favor of annual parliaments and universal suffrage. Mem-
ber after member of the House of Lords reeled into the
Painted Chamber, dishevelled, bleeding, with pale face and
torn garments, to protest against the violence of the mob
and the insult to Parliamentary authority. Ashburnham,
Townshend and Willoughby, Stormont and Bathurst,
Mansfield, Mountfort, and Boston, one after another came
in, dismaved victims of and witnesses to the violence that
reigned outside. Bishop after bishop entered to complain
of brutal ill-treatment. But the Duke of Richmond was
so wrapped up in his own speech and its importance that
he could only protest against anything which interrupted
its flow. It is agreeable to find that imbecility and terror
did not rule unchallenged over the L^pper House that day.
One account, that of Walpole, who is always malicious,
represents Lord ]\Iansfield as sitting upon the woolsack
trembling like an aspen. Another, more creditable and
more credible, declares that Lord Mansfield showed
throughout the utmost composure and presence of mind.
About the gallantry of Lord Townshend there can be no
doubt. When he heard that Lord Boston was in the hands
of the mob, he turned to the younger peers about him, re-
minded them of their youth, and the fact that they wore
swords, and called upon them to draw with him and fight
their way to the rescue of their brother peer. It was at
least a gallant if a hopeless suggestion. What could the

198 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lt.

rapiers of a score of gentlemen avail against the thousands
who seethed and raved outside Westminster Hall? The
solemn Duke of Richmond interfered. If the Lords went
forth to face the mob he urged that they should go as a
House and carrying the Mace before them. On this a
debate sprang up, while the storm still raged outside. A
Middlesex magistrate, called to the bar in haste, declared
that he could onlv offer six constables to meet the diffi-
culty. A proposal to call upon the military power was
fiercely opposed by Lord Sholburne. Under such condi-
tions the Peers did nothing, and in the end retired, leav-
ing Lord Mansfield alone in his glory.

If things went badly in the Upper House, they went
still worse in the Lower House. While members trying
to gain entrance suffered almost as much ill-treatment as
the Peers at the hands of the mob, the Commons' House
was much more closely leaguered than the House of Lords.
For it was in the Commons' House that the petition was
to be presented. It was in the Commons' House that Lord
George Gordon, pale, lank-haired, black-habited, with the
blue cockade in his hat, was calling upon the Commons to
receive immediately the monstrous petition. Every en-
trance to the House was choked with excited humanity.
The Lobby itself was overflowing with riotous fanatics,
who thundered at intervals upon the closed doors of the
Chamber with their bludgeons. Shrieks of " No Popery,"
and huzzas for Lord George Gordon filled the place with
a hideous clamor strangely contrasting with the decorum
that habitually reigned there.

Lord George Gordon did not cut a very heroic figure on
that memorable day at Westminster. He was perpetually
rushing from his place to the door of the House to repeat
to rowdyism in the Lobby what different members had
said in the debates. At one time he denounced the Speaker
of the House; at another, Mr. Rous; at another, Lord
North. Occasionally he praised a speaker, and his praise
was more ludicrous than his condemnation. At one mo-
ment, when Lord George was at the door communicating
with the crowd, Sir Michael le Fleming came up to him

1780. LORD GEORGE GORDON AT WESTMINSTER. 199

and tried to induce him to return to his seat. Lord George
immediately began caressing Sir Michael le Fleming in a
childish, almost in an imbecile way, patting and stroking
him upon the shoulders, and expressing inarticulately a
pitiful kind of joy. He introduced Sir Michael le Flem-
ing to the mob as a man who had just been speaking for
them. A little later Lord George again addressed the
crowd, this time from the little gallery, when he stimu-
lated their passions by appeal to the example of the
Scotch, who had found no redress till they had pulled
down the IMass-houses. Probably no stranger scene has ever
been witnessed at Westminster than this of the pale-faced
fanatic and madman, with the blue cockade in his hat,
running backward and forward from the Chamber to
the door of the House, delivering inflammatory addresses
to the mob that raged in the Lobby, and stimulating them
by his wild harangues to persevere in their conduct, and
to terrify the King and the Parliament into obedience to
their wishes. The names of the members who spoke
against the petition he communicated to the shrieking
throng; their utterances he falsely reported.

It is deeply interesting to note a fact which has
escaped the notice of not merely the most conspicuous his-
torians of the time, but also the keen eye of the great
novelist who studied the event. It is recorded in the
"Annual Eegister'^ for the year 1780 that among the
members whose names Lord George Gordon denounced to
the raving crowd in the Lobby the name of Mr. Burke
had especial prominence. It is curious to picture the im-
becile fanatic standing upon the steps leading to the
Strangers' Gallery and invoking the fury of the fanatic
and the lawless against the greatest public man of his age.

For a while Lord George Gordon was suffered to rant
unimpeded. At last Colonel Holroyd, seizing hold of
him, threatened to move for his immediate committal to
Newgate, while Colonel Gordon, with a blunter and yet
more efficacious eloquence, declared that if any of the
rioters attempted to force his way past the door of the
House, he, Colonel Gordon, would run his sword throudi

200 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

the body, not of the invader, but of Lord George Gordon.
As Colonel Gordon was a kinsman of Lord George's, it
may be that Lord George knew sufficient of his temper
to believe his word and was sufficiently sane to accept his
warning. At least there came a pause in his inflammatory
phrases, and shortly afterward the news of the arrival of
a party of Horse and Foot Guards did what no persua-
sions or entreaties could effect. It cleared the Lobby and
the approaches to the House. Under conditions of what
might be called comparative quiet the division on Lord
George Gordon's proposal for the immediate reception of
the petition was taken, and only found six supporters
against a majority of one hundred and ninety-two.

But mischief was afoot and began to work. The mob
that had been dispersed from Westminster broke up into
different parties and proceeded to expend its fury in the
destruction of buildings. The hustling of peers, the bon-
neting of bishops, the insulting of members of Parliament,
all made rare sport; but the demolition of Catholic places
of worship promised a better, and suggested exquisite pos-
sibilities of further depredation. The Catholic chapels
in. Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in Warwick
Street, Golden Square — the one belonging to the Sar-
dinian, the other to the Bavarian Minister — were attacked,
plundered, set fire to, and almost entirely destroyed. The
military were sent for ; they arrived too late to prevent the
arson, but thirteen of the malefactors were seized and com-
mitted to Newgate, and for the night the mob Avas dis-
persed. It was not a bad day's work for the rioters. Par-
liament had been insulted, the Government and the very
Throne menaced. In two parts of the town Catholic build-
ings, under the protection of foreign and friendly Powers,
stood stripped and blackened piles. Eiot had faced the
bayonets of authority — had for a moment seemed ready
to defy them. Yet at first nobody seems to have taken the
matter seriously or gauged its grave significance. Neither
the Catholics, against whom the agitation was levelled,
nor the peers and prelates and members of Parliament who
had been so harshlv treated seemed to understand the stern-

1780. SPREAD OF THE GORDON RIOTS. 201

ness of the situation. There was a sense of confidence in
law and order, a feeling of security in good administra-
tion, which lulled men into a false confidence.

This false confidence was increased by the quiet. which
reigned over Saturday, June 3. Parliament met undis-
turbed. An address of Lord Bathurst's, calling for a prose-
cution of " the authors, abettors, and instruments of yes-
terday's outrages," was carried after a rambling and pur-
poseless debate, and the House of Lords adjourned till the
6th, apparently convinced that there was no further cause
for alarm. This public composure was rudely shaken on
the following day, Sunday, June 4. The rioters reassem-
bled at Moorfields. Once again the buildings belonging
to Catholics were ransacked and demolished; once again
incendiary fires blazed, and processions of savage figures
decked in the spoils of Catholic ceremonial carried terror
before them. The Lord Mayor, Kennett, proved to be a
weak man wholly unequal to the peril he was suddenly
called upon to face. There were soldiers at hand, but they
were not made use of. One act of resolution might have
stayed the disorder at the first, but no man was found
resolute enough to perform the act; and rapine, raging
unchecked, became more audacious and more dangerous.

On the Monday, though the trouble grew graver, noth-
ing was done to meet it beyond the issuing of a proclama-
tion offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the dis-
covery of the persons concerned in the destruction of the
chapels of the Bavarian and Sardinian Ambassadors. The
mob gathered again, bolder for the impunity with which
it had so far acted. Large bodies of men marched to Lord
George Gordon's house in Welbeck Street and paraded
there, displaying the trophies stripped from the destroyed
chapels in Moorfields. Others began work of fresh de-
struction in Wapping and in Smithfield. Sir George
Savile's house in Leicester Fields, and the houses of Mr.
Eainsforth of Clare Market, and Mr. Maberly of Little
Queen Street, respectable tradesmen who had been active
in arresting rioters on the Fridaj^ night, were sacked and
their furniture burned in huge bonfires in the streets. The

202 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ca. lv.

Guards who had the task of escorting the prisoners taken
on Friday to Xewgate were pelted.

On the Tuesday authority seemed to have wakened up
to a vague sense that the situation was somewhat serious.
Parliament reassembled to find itself again surrounded
and menaced by a mob, which wounded Lord Sandwich
and destroyed his carriage. Lord George Gordon attended
the House, but even his madness appeared to have taken
alarm, for he had caused a proclamation to be issued in
the name of the Protestant Association disavowing the
riots. As he sat in his place, with the blue cockade in his
hat, Colonel Herbert, who was afterwards Lord Carnarvon,
called to him from across the House, telling him to take
oft' the badge or he would cross the floor and do it himself.
Lord George's vehemence did not stand him in good stead
where he himself was menaced. He had no following in
the House. Colonel Herbert was a man of the sword and
a man of his word. Lord George Gordon took the cockade
from his hat and put it in his pocket. If authority had
acted with the firmness of Colonel Gordon on the Friday
and of Colonel Herbert on the Tuesday, the tumult might
have been as easily cowed as its leader. But still nothing
was done. The House of Commons made a half-hearted
promise that when the tumult subsided the Protestant
petition would be taken into consideration, and a sugges-
tion that Lord George ought to be expelled was unfavor-
ably received.

From that moment, and for two long and terrible days,
riot ruled in London. In all directions the evening sky
was red with flames of burning buildings; in all direc-
tions organized bands of men, maddened with drink, car-
ried terror and destruction. The Tuesday evening was
signalized by the most extraordinary and most daring deed
that the insurgents had yet done. Some of the men ar-
rested on the Friday had been committed to Newgate
Prison. To ISTcAVgate Prison a vast body of men marched,
and called upon Mr. Akerman, the keeper, to give up his
keys and surrender his prisoners. His firm refusal con-
verted the mob into a besieging army.

1780. THE BURNING OF NEWGATE PRISON. 203

Two men of genius have contributed to our knowledge
of the siege of Xewgate. Crabbe, the poet, was at West-
minster on the Tuesday, and after seeing all the disturb-
ance there he made his way with the current of destruc-
tion towards Xewgate, and witnessed the astonishing capt-
ure of a massive prison by a body of men, imarmed save
with such rude weapons of attack as could be hurriedly
caught up. The prison was so strong that, had a dozen
men resisted, it would have been almost impossible to take
it without artillery. But there was nobody to resist. Mr.
Akerman, the keeper, acted with great courage, and did
his duty loyally, but he could not hold the place alone.
Crowbars, pickaxes, and fire forced an entrance into the
jjrison. " Xot Orpheus himself," wrote Crabbe, " had
more courage or better luck " than the desperate assailants
of the prison. They broke into the blazing prison, they
rescued their comrades, they set all the other prisoners
free. Into the street, where the summer evening was as
bright as noonday with the blazing building, the prisoners
were borne in triumph. Some of them had been con-
demned to death, and never were men more bewildered
than by this strange reprieve. The next day Dr. Johnson
walked, in company with Dr. Scott, to look at the place,
and found the prison in ruins, with the fire yet glowing.
The stout-hearted Doctor was loud in his scorn of " the
cowardice of a commercial place," where such deeds could
be done without hinderance.

While one desperate gang was busy with the destruction
of N"ewgate, other gangs, no less desperate, were busy with
destructive work elsewhere. The new prison in Clerken-
well was broken open by one crowd, and its prisoners set
free. Another assailed Sir John Fielding's house, and
burned its furniture in the streets. A third attacked the
house of Lord Mansfield in Bloomsbury Square. This last
enterprise was one of the most remarkable and infamous of
the bad business. Lord Mansfield and his wife had barely
time to escape from the house by a back way before the
mob were upon it. The now familiar scenes of savage
violence followed. The doors were broken open, the

204 A III>;T0RY or T[IE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

throng poured in, and in a compcaratively short time the
stately mansion was a ruin. T.ord Mansfield's law library,
one of the finest in the kingdom, and all the judicial
nuinuscripts made by him during his long career, were
destroyed. A small detachment of soldiers came upon the
scene too late to prevent the destruction of the house or
to intimidate the mob ; although, according to one account,
the Riot Act was read and a couple of volleys fired, with
the result that several of the rioters were shot and wound-
ed. It is curious to find that the reports of the intended
purposes of the wreckers drew persons of quality and
curiosity to Bloomsbury Square in their coaches as to a
popular performance, and that the destruction of Lord
Mansfield's house proved more attractive than the produc-
tion of a new play.

The Wednesday was no less terrible than the Tuesday.
The rioters seemed to think that, like so many Mortimers,
they were now Lords of London. They sent messages to
the keepers of the public prisons of the King's Bench, the
Fleet, and to prominent Catholic houses, informing them
of the precise time when they would be attacked and de-
stroyed. By this time peaceable London was in a state of
panic. All shops were shut. From most windows blue
banners were thrust out to show the sympathy of the oc-
cupants with the agitation, and the words " Xo Popery "
were scrawled in chalk across the doors and windows of
every householder who wished to protect himself against
the fanaticism of the mob. At least one enterprising in-
dividual got from Lord George Gordon his signature to
a paper bidding all true friends to Protestants to do no
injury to the property of any true Protestant, " as I am
well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and
worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of
houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue
banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no
safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these
the mob busied themselves. The description in the " An-
nual Register " is so striking that it deserves to be cited ;
it is prol)ably from the pen of Edmund Burke: "As soon

1780. PUBLIC ALARM IN LONDON. 205

as the day was drawing towards a close one of the most
dreadful spectacles this country ever beheld was ex-
hibited. Let those who Avere not spectators of it judge
what the inhabitants felt when they beheld at the same
time the flames ascending and rolling in clouds from
the King's Bench and Fleet Prisons, from New Bridewell,
from the toll-gates on Blackfriars Bridge, from houses in
every quarter of the town, and particularly from the bot-
tom and middle of Holborn, where the conflagration was
horrible beyond description. . . . Six-and-thirty fires, all
blazing at one time, and in different quarters of the city,
were to be seen from one spot. During the whole night,
men, women, and children were running up and down with
such goods and effects as they wished to preserve. The
tremendous roar of the authors of these terrible scenes
was heard at one instant, and at the next the dreadful re-
port of soldiers' musquets, firing in platoons and from dif-
ferent quarters; in short, everything served to impress
the mind with ideas of universal anarchy and approaching
desolation.^'

From the closing words of this account it is plain that
at last authority had begun to do its duty and to meet
force with force. Terrorized London shook with every
wild rumor. Noav men said that the mob had got arms,
and was more than a match for the militarv ; now that the
lions in the Tower were to be let loose ; now that the luna-
tics from Bedlam were to be set free. Every alarming
rumor that fear could inspire and terror credit was buzzed
abroad upon that dreadful day, when the servants of the
Secretary of State wore blue cockades in their hats and
private gentlemen barricaded their houses, armed their
people, and prepared to stand a siege. Horace Walpole
found his relative, Lord Hertford, engaged with his sons
in loading muskets to be in readiness for the insurgents.
Everybody now shared in the general alarm, but the alarm
affected different temperaments differently. Some men
fied from town; others loaded guns and sharpened swords;
others put their hands in their pockets and lounged,
curious spectators, on the heels of riot, eager to observe

206 A UISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

and willing to record events so singular and so unprece-
dented.

It is pleasant to be able to chronicle that the King
showed an especial courage and composure during that
wild week's work. George the Third never lost head nor
heart. To do his House justice, personal courage was one
of their traditions, but the family quality never showed to
better advantage than in this crisis. If indeed George the
Second were prepared, as has been hinted, to fly from Lon-
don on the approach of the young Pretender, George the
Third displayed no such weakness in the face of a more
immediate peril. The peril was more immediate, it was
also more menacing. No man could safely say where
bad work so begun might ultimately pause. What had been
an agitation in favor of a petition might end in revolution
against the Crown. Outrages that had at first been per-
petrated with the purpose of striking terror only were
changing their character. Schemes of plunder formed no
part of the early plans of the rioters; now it began to be
known that the rioters had their eyes turned towards the
Bank of England and were planning to cut the pipes which
provided London with water. With a little more laxity
on the part of authority, and a few more successes on the
part of the mob, it is possible that Lord George Gordon
might have found himself a puppet Caesar on the shields
of Protestant Praetorians.

That nothing even approaching to this did happen was
largely due to the courage and the determination of the
Sovereign. The Administration vacillated. The Privy
Council, facing an agitation of whose extent and popularity
it was unaware, feared to commit itself. George felt no
such fear. Where authority fell back paralj^zed in the
presence of a new, unknowm, and daily increasing peril, he
came forward and asserted himself after a fashion worthy
of a king. If the Privy Council would not act with him,
then he would act without them. He would lead out his
Guards himself and charge the rioters at their head. The
courage which had shown itself at Dettingen, the courage
which had been displayed by generations of rough German

1780. STERN ACTION BY THE AUTHORITIES. 207

electors and Italian princes, showed itself gallantly now
and saved the city. The King lamented the weakness of
the magistrates, but at least there was one, he said, who
would do his duty, and he touched his breast with his hand.
George the Third is not a heroic figure in history, but just
at that moment he bore himself with a royal honor which
ranked him with Leonidas or Horatius. If there are to
be kings at all, that is how kings ought to behave. George
was fortunate in finding a man to stand by him and to lend
to his soldierly courage the support of the law. Wedder-
burn, the Attorney-General, declared, with all the authority
of his high position, that in cases where the civil power was
unable to restrain arson and outrage, it was the duty of all
persons, civil as well as military, to use all means in their
power to deal with the danger. The reading of the Eiot
Act was nugatory in such exceptional conditions, and it
became the duty of the military to attack the rioters. Thus
supported, the King ordered Wedderburn to write at once
to Lord Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief, authorizing
him to employ the military without waiting for authority
from the civil powers. Wedderburn, who in a few days
was to become Chief Justice and Lord Loughborough,
wrote the order, kneeling upon one knee at the council
table, and from that moment the enemy was grappled with
in grim earnest.

It was high time. No less than two unsuccessful attacks
had been made during that day upon the Bank of England,
but precautions had been taken, and the successes of New-
gate were not repeated in Threadneedle Street. The as-
sailants were repulsed on each occasion b}^ the military,
who occupied every avenue leading to the Bank. Had the
attack upon the Bank succeeded it is impossible to form
any estimate of what the result might have been. But it
failed, and with that failure the whole hideous agitation
failed as well. But the crowning horror of the whole epi-
sode was reserved for that final day of danger. In Hol-
born, where riot raged fiercest, stood the distilleries of Mr.
Langdale, a wealthy Roman Catholic. The distilleries
were attacked and fired. Rivers of spirit ran in all the con-

208 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

duits and blazed as they ran. Men, drunk with liquor and
maddened with excitement, kneeled to drink, and, drinking,
fell and died where they lay. By this time the soldiers
were acting vigorousl}', driving the rabble before them,
shooting all who resisted, as some did resist desperately.
The fire that had grown during the week was quenched at
last in blood. On the Thursday morning London was
safe, comparatively quiet, almost itself again. The shops
indeed were still closed, but mutiny had lived its life.
There was a short, sharp struggle during the day in Fleet
Street, between some of the fanatics and the Guards, which
was stamped out by repeated bayonet charges which killed
and wounded many. Everywhere were blackened spaces,
smouldering ruins, stains of blood, and broken weapons,
everywhere the signs of outrage and of conflict. But the
incendiary fires were quenched and with them the fire of
insurrection. The riots were at an end. The one wish of
every one was to obliterate their memory as speedily as
might be. The stains of blood were quickly removed from
the walls of the Bank of England, from the roadway of
Blackfriars Bridge. The marks of musket shots were
swiftly effaced from the scarred buildings.

It was never fully known how far the rioters themselves
suffered in the suppression of the disorder. The official re-
turns give lists of 285 direct deaths, and of 173 cases of
serious wounds in the hospitals. But this can only repre-
sent a small proportion of the actual casualties. Many
dead, many wounded, must have been carried away by
friends and hidden in hurried graves, or nursed in secret
to recovery. Many, too, perished at Blackfriars Bridge, or
were hideously consumed in the flames that rose from the
burning of Langdale's distilleries. But if the number of
those who suffered remains an unknown quantity, it is
not difficult to approximate to the destructive power of the
disturbances. The cost of the whole bad business has been
estimated at at least £180,000. To that amount an im-
becile insanity had despoiled London. But the imbecile
insanity had incurred a deeper debt. In the wild trials
that followed upon the panic and the violence forty-nine

1780. SUPPRESSION OF THE GORDON RIOTS. 209

men were condemned to death for their share in the riot,
and twenty-nine of these actually suffered the last penalty
of the law. It was not, in the eyes of some, a heavy sacri-
fice to pay. It did not seem a heavy sacrifice in the eyes
of John Wilkes, who declared that if he were intrusted
with sovereign power not a single rioter should be left alive
to boast of, or to plead for forgiveness for, his offence. But
Lord George Gordon was not worth the life of one man,
not to speak of nine-and-twenty.

The folly of the Administration did not end with their
victory. On the 9th they did what they ought to have done
Jong before, and arrested Lord George Gordon. But even
this necessary belated act of justice they performed in the
most foolish fashion. Everything that the pomp and cere-
monial of arrest and arraignment could do was done to
exalt Lord George in the eyes of the mob and swell his im-
portance. He was conveyed to the Tower of London.
Though the rising was thoroughly stamped out, and there
was practically no chance of any attempt being made to
rescue the prisoner, Lord George was escorted to the Tower
by a numerous military force in broad daylight, with an
amount of display that gave him the dignity of a hero and
a martyr. To add to the absurdity of the whole business,
the poor crazy gentleman was solemnly tried for high
treason. Many months later, in the early February of the
next year, 1781, when the riots were a thing of the past,
and their terrible memory had been largely effaced, George
Gordon was brought to the Bar of the Court of King's
Bench for his trial. His wits had not mended during his
confinement. He had been very angry because he thou,g;ht
that he was prevented from seeing his friends. His anger
deepened when he learned that no friends had desired to
see him. The fanatic had served his turn, and was for-
gotten. He was not of that temper which makes men de-
voted to a leader. He was but the foolish figurehead of a
fanatical outburst, and when he* was set aside he was for-
gotten. But when he was brought up for trial a measure
of popular enthusiasm in the man reasserted itself. He
behaved very strangely at his trial, urging his right to read

210 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lv.

long passages of Scripture in his defence. Happily for
him, his defence was managed by abler hands than his
own. The genius of Erskine, the gifts of Kenyon, were ex-
pended in his behalf. The unwisdom of the Government
in prosecuting him for high treason was soon apparent.
He was acquitted, to the general satisfaction of his sup-
porters, and of many who were not his supporters. If
public thanksgiving were returned in several churches for
his acquittal, one grave manly voice was uplifted to swell
the approval. Dr. Johnson declared that he was far better
pleased that Lord George Gordon should escape punish-
ment than that a precedent should be established for hang-
ing a man for constructive treason.

Thus the great Gordon riots flickered ignominiously out.
Lord George made occasional desperate efl^orts to reassert
himself, trying to force himself upon the notice of the
King at St. James's. In 1787 he was found guilty of libels
upon the Queen of France and the French Ambassador.
He fled to Holland, where he was arrested by the Dutch
authorities, and shipped back to England. He was com-
mitted to Xewgate, by curious chance, on the anniversary
of the day on which it had been burned by his followers.
In Newgate he lived for some years, adjuring Christianity,
and declaring himself to be a follower of the Jewish faith.
In Newgate the fanatic, renegade, madman, died of jail
distemper on November 1, 1793. He was only forty-two
years old. In his short, unhappy life he had done a great
deal of harm, and, as far as it is possible to judge, no good
whatever. Perhaps the example of the Gordon riots served
as a precedent in another land. If the news of the fall
of the Bastille and the September massacres reached Lord
George Gordon in his prison, he may have recalled to his
crazed fancy the fall of Newgate and the bloody Wednes-
day of the June of 1780.

IISO. TUE YOUNGER PITT AND BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. 211

CHAPTER LVI.

TWO NEW MEN.

The year 1780 that witnessed the Gordon riots wel-
comed into political life two men, both of whom were
young, both of whom bore names that were already famil-
iar from an honorable parentage, and both of whom were
destined to play very conspicuous parts in the House of
Commons. One of the two men was known to his family
alone, and his intimates, as a youth of great promise and
great knowledge, which gave to his twenty years the ripen-
ed wisdom of a statesman and a scholar. The other, who
was eight years older, had been for some years in the pub-
lic eye, had been the hero of a romantic scandal which had
done much to make his name notorious, and had written
some dramatic works which had done more to make his
name famous. It was a fortunate chance that when the
House of Commons stood in need of new blood and new
men the same time and the same year saw the return to
Parliament of William Pitt and of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan.

It has been said that every reader of the " Iliad " finds
himself irresistibly compelled to take sides with one or
other of the great opposing camps, and to be thenceforward
either a Greek or a Trojan. In something of the same
spirit every student of the reign of the third George be-
comes perforce a partisan of one or other of two statesmen
who divided the honors of its prime between them, who
were opposed on all the great questions of their day, and
who represented at their best the two forces into which
English political life was then, and is still, divided. The
history of England for the closing years of the eighteenth
century and the early dawn of the nineteenth century is

212 A UlSTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvi.

the history of these two men and of their influence. Those
who study their age and their career are separated as keenly
and as hotly to-day as they were separated keenly and
liotly a hundred years ago into the followers of Charles
James Fox or the followers of William Pitt. The record
of English party politics is a record of long and splendid
duels between recognized chiefs of the two antagonistic
armies. What the struggle between Gladstone and Dis-
raeli, for example, was to our own time, the struggle be-
tween Fox and Pitt was to our ancestors of three genera-
tions ago. All the force and feeling that made for what
we now call liberal principles found its most splendid
representative in the son of Lord Holland: all the force
and feeling that rallied around the conservative impulse
looked for and found its ideal in the son of Lord Chatham.
The two men were as much contrasted as the opinions that
they professed. To the misgoverned, misguided, splen-
didly reckless boyhood and early manhood of Fox Pitt op-
posed the gravity and stillness of his youth. The exuber-
ant animal vitality of Fox, wasting itself overlong in the
flame of aimless passions, was emphasized by the solid re-
serve, the passionless austerity of Pitt. The one man was
compact of all the heady enthusiasms, the splendid gener-
osities of a nature rich in the vitality that sought eagerly
new outlets for its energy, that played hard as it worked
hard, that exulted in extremes. The other moved in a
narrow path to one envisaged aim, and, conscious of a cer-
tain physical frailty, husbanded his resources, limited the
scope of his fine intellect, and acted not indeed along the
line of least resistance but within lines of purpose that
were not very far apart. The one explored the mountain
and the valley, lingered in gardens and orchards, or wan-
dered at all adventure upon desolate heaths ; the other pur-
sued in patience the white highway to his goal, untempted
or at least unconquered by allurements that could prove
irresistible to his adversary.

The two men differed as much in appearance as in mind.
The outer seeming of each is almost as familiar as the
forms and faces of contemporaries. Fox was massively

1780. THE CHARACTER OF THE YOUNGER PITT. 213

corpulent, furiously untidy, a heroic sloven, his bull throat
and cheeks too often black with a three days' beard, in-
finitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of the noblest
tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was
but a part, and perhaps an inevitable part, of his wide
humanity. Pitt was slender, boyish, precise, punctilious
in attire, his native composure only occasionally lightened
by a flash of humor or sweetened b}'' a show of playfulness,
old beyond his years and young to the end of his short life,
sternly self-restrained and self-commanded, gracious in a
kind of melancholy, unconscious charm, a curiously un-
adorned, uncolored personality, that attracted where it did
attract with a magnetism that was perhaps all the more
potent for being somewhat difficult to explain. Fox was al-
ways a lover in many kinds of love, fugitive, venal, illicit,
honorable, and enduring. Pitt carried himself through
temptations with a monastic rigor. There was a time when
his friends implored him for the sake of appearances, and
not to flout too flagrantly the manners of the time, to show
himself in public with a woman of the town. His one love
story, strange and fruitless, neither got nor gave happiness
and remains an unsolved mystery.

There were only two tastes held in common by the two
men, and those were tastes shared by most of the gentle-
men of their generation and century, the taste for politics
and the taste for wine. Men of the class of Holland's son,
of Chatham's son, if they were not soldiers and sailors,
and very often when they were soldiers and sailors, went
into political life as naturally as they went into a univer-
sity or into the hunting field. In the case of the younger
Fox and of the younger Pitt the political direction was
conspicuously inevitable from the beginning. The paths
of both lay plain from the threshold of the nursery to the
threshold of St. Stephen's. The lad who was the chosen
companion of his father at an age when his contemporaries
had only abandoned a horn-book to grapple with Corderius,
the boy who learned the principles of elocution and the
essence of debate from the lips of the Great Commoner,
were children very specially fostered in the arts of states-

214 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvi.

*

manship and curiously favored in the knowledge that
enables men to guide and govern men. From the other
taste there was no escape, or little escape, possible for the
men of that day. It would have been strange indeed if
Fox had been absolved from the love of wine, which was
held by every one he knew, from his father's old friend
and late enemy Rigby to the elderly place-holder, gam-
bler, and letter-writer Selwyn, who loved, slandered, and
failed to ruin Fox's brilliant youth. It would have been
impossible for Pitt, floated through a precarious childhood
on floods of Oporto, to liberate his blood and judgment
from the generous liquor that promised him a strength it
sapped. It was no more disgrace to the austere Pitt than
to the profligate Fox to come to the House of Commons
visibly under the influence of much more wine than
could possibly have been good for Hercules. Sobriety was
not unknown among statesmen even in those days of many
bottles, but intoxication was no shame, and Burke was no
more commended for his temperance than Fox, or Pitt, or
Sheridan were blamed for their intemperance.

William Pitt was born in 1759, when George the Second
still seemed stable on his throne, and when the world knew
nothing of that grandson and heir to whose service the
child of Chatham was to be devoted. He was the fourth
child and second son; the third son and last child of
Chatham was born two years later. William Pitt was deli-
cate from his infancy, and by reason of his delicacy was
never sent to school. He was educated by private tuition,
directly guided and controlled by his father. From the
first he was precocious, full of promise, full of perform-
ance. He acquired knowledge eagerly and surely; what
he learned he learned well and thoroughly. Trained from
his cradle in the acquirements essential to a public life, he
applied himself, as soon as he was of an age to appreciate
his tastes and to form a purpose, to equipping himself at
all points for a political career. When the great Chatham
died he left behind him a son who was to be as famous
as himself, a statesman formed in his own school, trained
in his own methods, inspired by his counsels, and guided by

1759-80. THE YOUTH OF THE YOUXGER PITT. 215

his example. A legend which may be more than legend
has it that from the first destiny seemed determined to
confront the genius and the fame of Fox with the genius
and the fame of Pitt. It is said that the Foxes were as-
sured by a relative of the Pitts that the young son of
Chatham, then a child under a tutor's charge, showed parts
which were sure to prove him a formidable rival to the pre-
cocious youth who was at once the delight and the despair
of Lord Holland's life. It is certain that the young Fox
wa« early made acquainted with the ripe intelligence and
eager genius of the younger Pitt. It was his chance to
stand with the boy one night at the bar of the House of
Lords, and to be attracted and amazed at the avidity with
which Pitt followed the debate, the sagacity with which
he commented upon what he saw and heard, and the readi-
ness with which he formulated answers to arguments which
failed to carry conviction to his da^vning wisdom. Pitt
loved the House of Commons while he was still in the
schoolroom; it was inevitable that he should belong to the
House of Commons, and he entered it at the earliest pos-
sible moment, even before he was legally qualified to do so,
for he was not quite of age when he first took his seat.

The qualities of fairness and fitness which Greek wis-
dom praised in the conduct of life were characteristic of
Pitt's life. In its zealous, patient preparation for public
life, its noble girding of the loins against great issues, its
wistful renunciation of human hopes, its early conscious-
ness of terrible disease, its fortitude in the face of catas-
trophes so unexpected and so cruel; in its pensive isola-
tion, in the richness of those early successes that seemed as
if in anticipation to offer compensation for the early death,
his life seems to have been adorned with certain ornaments
and ordered by certain laws that make it strangely comely,
curiously symmetrical. In that youth of his which was
never quite young, and which was never allowed to
grow old, in his austere attitude to so much that
youth holds most dear, in the high passion of his
patriotism with its eager desire, so often and so sternly
thwarted, to add to England's glory, he stands apart from

21 G A IIIRTOUY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. cH r.vi.

many greater and many wiser men, in a melancholy, lonely
dignity. It has been given to few men to inspire more
passionate attachment in the minds of his contemporaries ;
it has been given to few statesmen to be regarded abroad,
by e3'es for the most part envious or hostile, as pre-emi-
nently representative of the qualities that made his coun-
try at once disliked and feared. His political instincts
were for the most part admirable, and if it had been his
fortune to serve a sovereign more reasonable, more tem-
perate, and more intelligent than George the Third his
name might have been written among the great reformers
of the world. At home an unhappy deference to the dic-
tates of a rash and incapable king, abroad an enforced
opposition to one of the greatest forces and one of the
greatest conquerors that European civilization has seen,
prevented Pitt from gaining that position to which his
genius, under conditions less persistently unhappy, would
have entitled him. To have gained what he did gain
under such conditions was in itself a triumph.

The new-comer who entered Parliament at the same
period as William Pitt was as curiously unlike him as even
Fox himself. If few knew anything of Pitt every one
knew something of Sheridan, who had already made fame
in one career and was now about to make fame in another.
It may afford consolation to the unappreciated to reflect
that the most famous English dramatist since Shake-
speare's day, the brightest wit of an age which piqued it-
self into being considered witt}^ the most brilliant orator
of an age which regarded oratory as one of the greatest of
the arts, and whose roll is studded with the names of illus-
trious orators, the most unrivalled humorist of a century
which in all parts of the world distinguished itself by its
love of humor, was looked upon in his nonage as a dull,
unpromising boy, chiefly remarkable for his idleness and
carelessness.

The quality which we now call Bohemianism certainly
ran in Sheridan's blood. His grandfather. Dr. Thomas
Sheridan, the friend of Swift, the Dublin clergyman and
schoolmaster, was a delightfully amiable, wholly reckless.

1751-80. THE PARENTS OF BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. 217

slovenly, indigent, and cheerful personage. His father,
Thomas Sheridan, was a no less cheerful, no less careless
man, who turned play-actor, and taught elocution, and
married a woman who wrote novels and a life of Swift.
At one time he could boast the friendship of Dr. Johnson,
who seems to have regarded him with an ill-humored con-
tempt, but Dr. Johnson's expression of this contempt
brought about a quarrel. The most remarkable thing
about him is that he was the father of his son. Neither he
nor his wife appears to have had any idea of their good
fortune. Mrs, Sheridan once declared of her two boys that
she had never met with " two such impenetrable dunces."
None the less the father contrived with difficulty to scrape
together enough money to send his boys to Harrow, and
there, luckily. Dr. Parr discerned that Eichard, with all his
faults, was by no means an impenetrable dunce. Both he
and Sumner, the head-master of Harrow, discovered in the
schoolboy Sheridan great talents which neither of them
was capable of calling into action.

Eichard Sheridan came from Harrow School and Har-
row pla3'grounds to London, and, later on, to Bath. Lon-
don did not make him much more industrious or more
careful than he had been at Harrow-on-the-Hill. It was
far pleasanter to translate the honeyed Greek of Theocri-
tus, with its babble of Sicilian shepherds, its nymphs and
waters and Sicilian seas, than to follow the beaten track
of ordinary education. It was vastly more entertaining
to translate the impassioned prose of Aristaenetus into im-
passioned verse, especially in collaboration with a cherish-
ed friend, than to yawn over Euclid and to grumble over
Cocker. The translation of Aristaenetus, the boyish task
of Sheridan and his friend Halhed, still enjoj^s a sort of
existence in the series of classical translations in Bohn's
Library. It is one of the ironies of literature that fate
has preserved this translation while it has permitted the
two Begum speeches, that in the House of Commons and
that in Westminster Hall, practically to perish. What
little interest does now cling to the early work belongs to
the fact of its being a collaboration. Halhed, who worked

218 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvi.

with Sheridan at the useless task, was a clever young Ox-
ford student, who was as poor as he was clever, and who
seemed to entertain the eccentric idea that large sums of
money were to be readily obtained from the reading pub-
lic for a rendering in flippant verse of the prose of an
obscure author whose very identity is involved in doubt.
Aristaenetus did not become the talk of the town even
in spite of an ingeniously promulgated rumor assigning
the authorship of the verses to Dr. Johnson. Neither did
the plays and essays in which the friends collaborated
meet with any prosperous fate.

From the doing of Greek prose into English verse Sheri-
dan and Halhed turned to another occupation, in which,
as in the first, they were both of the same mind. They
both fell in love, and both fell in love with the same
woman. All contemporary accounts agree in regarding
the daughter of Linley the musician as one of the most
beautiful women of her age. Those who knew the portrait
which the greatest painter of his time painted of Sheri-
dan's wife as St. Cecilia will understand the extraordinary,
the almost universal homage which society and art, wit
and wealth, and genius and rank paid to Miss Linley.
Unlike the girl in Sheridan's own poem, who is assured
by her adorer that she will meet with friends in all the
aged and lovers in the young. Miss Linley found old men
as well as young men competing for her affection and for
the honor of her hand.

Sheridan and Halhed were little more than bovs when
they first beheld and at once adored Miss Linley. Charles
Sheridan, Richard's elder brother, was still a very young
man. But Miss Linley had old lovers too, men long past
the middle pathway of their lives, who besought her to
marry them with all the impetuosity of youth. One of
them, whom she wisely rejected on the ground that wealth
alone could not compensate for the disparity in years, car-
ried off his disappointment gracefully enough by imme-
diately settling a sum of three thousand pounds upon the
young lady.

There is an air of romance over the whole course of

nil. MARRIAGE OF SHERIDAN AND MISS LINLEY. 219

Sheridan's attachment to Miss Linley. For a long time
he contrived to keep his attachment a secret from his elder
brother, Charles, and from his friend Halhed, both of
whom were madly in love with Miss Linley, and neither
of whom appears to have had the faintest suspicion of
finding a rival, the one in so close a kinsman, the other
in his own familiar friend. It must be admitted that
Sheridan does not appear to have behaved with that up-
rightness which was to be expected from his gallant, im-
petuous nature. Not merely did he keep his secret from
his brother and his friend, but he seems to have allowed
his friend to look upon him as a confidant and ally in
pressing Halhed's suit upon Miss Linley. Halhed re-
proached him sadly, but not bitterly, in a poetical epistle,
the value of which is more personal than poetical, when
he discovered the real mind of his friend. Then, like a
wise man if a sad one, Halhed went away. He sailed for
India, the golden land of so many wrecked hopes and dis-
appointed ambitions; he long outlived his first love and
his successful rival; he became in the fulness of time a
member of Parliament, and he died in 1830. He is dimly
remembered as the author of a grammar of the Bengalee
language and of a work on Gentoo laws translated from
the Persian.

Sheridan's courtship progressed more and more roman-
tically. The persecutions of a married rake named Mat-
thews drove Miss Linley to fly to France with Sheridan,
to whom she was secretly married at Calais. The revenge-
ful and disappointed Matthews inserted a libellous attack
upon Sheridan in the Bath Chronicle. Sheridan extorted
at his sword's point a public apology from Matthews.
Further and baser mendacity on the part of Matthews pro-
voked a second duel, in which the combatants seem to have
fought with desperate ferocity, and in which Sheridan,
badly wounded, refused to ask his life at the hands of his
antagonist and was only rescued by the seconds. A long
period of separation followed, full of dark hours for Sheri-
dan, hours only brightened by occasional meetings of the
most eccentric kind, as when the wild young poet, quaintly

220 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lti.

disguised in the complicated capes of a hackney coachman,
had the tormenting privilege of driving his beloved from
Covcnt Garden Theatre, where her voice and beauty were
nightly charming all London. At last the opposition of
Linley was overcome, and on April 13, 1773, the most
brilliant man and most beautiful woman of their day were
for the second time and more formally married, and a
series of adventures more romantic than fiction came to
an end.

The romance, it is agreeable to think, did not conclude
with the marriage ceremony. Sheridan seems to have
offered his wife as devoted an attachment after her mar-
riage as he had shown in the days of duelling and dis-
guising that preceded it. He wrote verses to her, and she
wrote verses to him, long after they had settled down to
serene domesticity, which breathe the most passionate ex-
pressions of mutual love. And yet there is a legend — it is
to be hoped and believed that it is only a legend — which
ends the romance very sadly. According to the legend
young Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Sheridan's close friend^
felt more than a friend's admiration for the wife of his
friend. According to the legend Elizabeth Sheridan re-
turned the passion, which by the unhappiness it brought
with it shortened her life. According to the legend Lord
Edward only married the fair Pamela, Philippe Egalite's
daughter, because of the striking resemblance she bore to
the St. Cecilia of his dreams. The legend rests on the
authority of Madame de Genlis, who was probably Pa-
mela's mother and who is no infallible authority. It is
possible that the undoubted resemblance of Pamela to Mrs.
Sheridan is the origin of the whole story. Lord Edward
was always falling in love in a graceful, chivalrous kind
of way. But there is no serious proof that his friendship
for Mrs. Sheridan was anything more than the friendship
an honorable man may entertain for the wife of his friend.
The graver and more authentic story of Fitzgerald's life
has yet to be told in these pages.

For a brief period after his marriage Sheridan thought
of devoting himself to the law. But his thoughts and

1775. SHERIDAN AS DRAMATIST AND POLITICIAN. 221

tastes were otherwise inclined, and on January 27, 1775,
not quite two years after his marriage, " The Rivals " was
produced at Co vent Garden and a new chapter opened in
the historv of dramatic literature. It is curious to think
that the clumsiness of the player to whom the part of Sir
Lucius O'Trigger was given came very near to damning
the most brilliant comedy that the English stage had seen
for nearly two centuries. The happy substitution of actor
Clinch for actor Lee, however, saved the piece and made
Sheridan the most popular author in London. How grate-
ful Sheridan felt to Clinch for rescuing Sir Lucius is
shown by the fact that his next production, the farce
called " St. Patrick's Day ; or, the Scheming Lieutenant,"
was expressly written to afford opportunity for Clinch's
peculiar talents. In 1777 came " The School for Scan-
dal," Sheridan's masterpiece, which was followed by Sheri-
dan's last dramatic work, " The Critic." Never probably
before was so splendid a success gained so rapidly, so
steadily increased in so short a time, to come so abruptly
to an end in the very pride of its triumph.

Quite suddenly the most famous English author then
alive found opportunity for the display of wholly new
and unexpected talents, and became one of the most fa-
mous politicians and orators alive. There had, indeed,
always been a certain political bent in Sheridan's mind.
He had tried his hand at many political pamphlets, frag-
ments of which were found among his papers by Moore.
He had always taken the keenest interest in the great
questions which agitated the political life of the waning
eighteenth century. The general election of 1780 gave
him an opportunity of expressing this interest in the pub-
lic field, and he was returned to Parliament as member for
the borough of Stamford. It is difficult to find a parallel
in our history for the extraordinary success which attended
Sheridan in his political life as it had already attended
him in his dramatic career.

Just on the threshold of his political career Sheridan
lost the wife he loved so well. He was profoundly af-
flicted, but the affliction lessened and he married a Miss

222 A UISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvi.

Ogle. There is a story told in connection with this second
marriage which is half melancholy, half humorous, and
wholly pathetic. The second Mrs. Sheridan, young, clever,
and ardently devoted to her husband, was found one day,
according to this story, walking up and down her drawing-
room apparently in a frantic state of mind because she had
discovered that the love-letters Sheridan had sent to her
were the same as those which he had written to his first
wife. Word for word, sentence for sentence, passion for
passion, they were the same letters. No doubt Sheridan
made his peace. It is to be presumed that he thought the
letters so good that they might very well serve a second
turn; but this act of literary parsimony was not happy.
Parsimony of his written work was, however, Sheridan's
peculiarity. Verses addressed to his dear St. Cecilia make
their appearance again and again, under altered conditions,
in his plays. It is singular enough, as has been happily
said, that the treasures of wit which Sheridan was thought
to possess in such profusion should have been the only
species of wealth which he ever dreamed of economizing.

1781. FALL OF THE LORD NORTH ADMINISTRATION. 223

CHAPTEE LVII.

FOX AND PITT.

Pitt entered public life the inheritor of a great name,
the transmitter of a great policy, at a time when the coun-
try was in difficulty and the Government in danger. In
the January of 1?81 Xorth was still in power, was still
supported by the King, had still some poor shreds of hope
that something, anything might happen to bring England
well out of the struggle with America. In the Xovember
of the same year Xorth reeled to his fall with the news of
the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. In those ten
months Pitt had already made himself a name in the
House of Commons. He was no longer merely the son
of Pitt; he was Pitt. He had attached himself to an
Opposition that was studded with splendid names, and
had proved that his presence added to its lustre. The
heroes and leaders of Opposition at Westminster welcomed
him to their ranks with a generous admiration and en-
thusiasm. Fox, ever ready to applaud possible genius,
soon pronounced him to be one of the first men in Parlia-
ment. Burke hailed him, not as a chip of the old block,
but as the old block itself. The praises of Burke and of
Fox were great, but they were not undeserved. When
the Ministry of Lord North fell into the dust, when the
King was compelled to accept the return of the Whigs to
office, Pitt had already gained a position which entitled
him in his own eyes not to accept office but to refuse it.

Pockingham formed a Ministry for the second time.
The new Ministry was formed of an alliance between the
two armies of the Eockingham Whigs and the Shelburne
Whigs. Eockingham represented the political princi-
ples that dated from the days of Walpole. Shel-

2i>4 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvii.

buriie rc])rcsentcd, or misrepresented, the principles
that dated from the days of Chatham. The King
would very much have preferred to take Shelburne with-
out Kockingham, but even the King had to recognize that
il was impossible to gratify his preference. Even if Shel-
burne had been a much better leader than he was he had
not the following which would entitle him to form a
Ministry on his own account. And Shelburne was by no
means a good leader. To the Liberal politician of to-day
Shelburne seems a much more desirable and admirable
statesman than Eockingham. Most of his political ideas
were in advance of liis time, and his personal friendships
prove him to have been a man of appreciative intelligence.
He had proved his courage in his youth as a soldier at
Campen and ]\Iinden; he had maintained his courage in
1T80 when he faced and was wounded by the pistol of
FuHarton. But his gifts, whatever they were, were not
of the quality nor the quantity to make a leader of men.
lie could not form a IMinistry for himself, and he was not
an element of stability in any Ministry of which he was a
member. The Administration formed by the alliance of
Rockino^ham and Shelburne could boast of many brilliant
names, and showed itself laudably anxious to add to their
number. In an Administration which had Fox for a Sec-
retary of State, Burke for Paymaster-General of the
Forces, and Slieridan for Under-Secretary of State, the
Vice-Treasurership of Ireland was offered to Pitt.

Pitt declined the offer. He had made up his mind that
he would not accept a subordinate situation. Conscious
of his ability, he was prepared to wait. He had not to wait
long. During the four agitated months of life allowed to
the Rockingham Administration Pitt distinguished him-
self by a motion for reform in the representative system
which was applauded by Fox and by Sheridan, but which
was defeated by twenty votes. Peace and reform were al-
ways passions deeply seated at the heart of Pitt; it was
ironic chance that associated him hereafter so intimately
with war and with antagonism to so many methods of re-
form in which he earnestly believed. When the quarrels

1782. FOX'S QUARREL WITH PITT. 225

between Fox and Shelburne over the settlement of the
American war ended after Eockingham's death in July,
1782, in the withdrawal from the Ministry of Fox, Burke,
and the majority of the Rockingham party, Pitt rightly
saw that his hour had come. Fox resigned rather than
serve with Shelburne, Pitt accepted Shelburne, and made
Shelburne's political existence possible a little longer.
With the aid of Pitt, Shelburne could hold on and let Fox
go; without Pitt, Fox would have triumphed over Shel-
burne. From this moment began the antagonism between
Fox and Pitt which was to last for the remainder of their
too brief lives. At the age of twenty-three Pitt found him-
self Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one of the most con-
spicuous men in the kingdom. Fox, who was ten years
older, was defeated by the youth whose rivalry had been
predicted to Fox when the youth was yet a child.

Pitt's triumph lasted less than a year. Fox, conscious
of his own great purposes, and eager to return to office
for their better advancement, was prepared to pay a gam-
bler's price for power. To overthrow Shelburne and with
Shelburne Pitt, he needed a pretext and an ally. The pre-
text was easy to find. He had but to maintain that the
terms of the peace with America were not the best that
the country had a right to expect. The ally was easy to
find and disastrous to accept. Nothing in the whole
of Fox's history is more regrettable than his unnatural
alliance with Lord North. Ever since the hour when Fox
had found his true self, and had passed from the ranks of
the obedient servants of the King into the ranks of those
who devoted themselves to the principles of liberty, there
had been nothing and there could have been nothing in
common between Fox and North. Everything that Fox
held most dear was detestable to North, as North's politi-
cal doctrines were now detestable to Fox. The political
enmity of the two men had been bitter in the extreme, and
Fox had assailed North with a violence which might well
seem to have made any form of political reconciliation im-
possible. Yet North was now the man with whom Fox
was content to throw in his lot in order to obtain the over-

VOL. III. — 8

226 A LilSTURV OK THE I'olR GEOK(iES. (h. lvii.

throw of Sholburiie and of Pitt. And Fox was not alone
anions,^ c^reat Wlii^s in this extraordinary transaction. He
carried lUirke witli him in this unlioly alliance between all
that was worst and all that was best in Enp^lish political
life. The two men whose genius and whose eloquence had
been the most potent factors in the fall of North a year be-
fore were now the means of bringing the discredited and
defeated statesman back again into the exercise of a ])ower
which, as none knew better than they, he had so shame-
fully misused. Fox and North between them swept Shel-
burne out of the field. Fox and North between them were
able to force a Coalition ]\rinistry upon a reluctant and in-
dignant King. The followers of Fox and the followers of
North in combination formed so numerous and so solid a
party that they were a])le to treat the sovereign with a
lack of ceremony to which he was little used. Fox had
gone out of office rather than admit that the right to
nominate the first minister rested with the King instead
of with the Cabinet. Now that he had returned to office,
he showed his determination to act up to his principles by
not permitting the King to nominate a single minister.

The King's contempt for North since the failure to
coerce America, the King's dislike of Fox since Fox be-
came an advanced politician, were deepened now into un-
compromising and unscrupulous enmity by the cavalier
conduct of the coalition. The King, with his doggedness
of purpose and his readiness to use any weapons against
those whom he chose to regard as his enemies, was a serious
danger even to a coalition that seemed so formidable
as the coalition between Fox and North. Fox may
very well have thought that his unjustifiable league
with North would at least have the result of giving him
sufficient time and sufficient influence to carry into effect
seme of those schemes for the good of the country which
he had most nearly at heart. The statesman who makes
some unhappy surrender of principle, some ignoble con-
cession to opportunity in order to obtain power, makes his
unworthy bargain from a conviction that his hold of office
is essential to the welfare of the State, and that a little

1783. FOX'S COALITION WITH LORD NORTH. 227

evil is excusable for a great good. The sophistry that de-
ceives the politician does not deceive the public. Fox
gravely injured his position v\dth the people who loved him
by stooping to the pact with Xorth, and he did not reap
that reward of success in his own high-minded and high-
hearted purposes which could alone have excused his con-
duct. The great coalition which was to stand so strong
and to work such wonders was destined to vanish like a
breath after accomplishing nothing, and to condemn Fox
with all his hopes and dreams to a career of almost un-
broken opposition for the rest of his life. If anything in
Fox's checkered career could be more tragic than the
degradation of his union with the politician whom he de-
clared to be void of every principle of honor and honesty,
it was the abiding consequences of the retribution that
followed it. Fox had fought hard and with success to
live down the follies of his youth. He had to fight harder
and with far less success to live down what the world per-
sisted in regarding as the infamy of his association with
North.

It is difficult to realize the arguments which persuaded
Fox, which persuaded Burke, to join their forces with the
fallen minister whom their own mouths, but a little while
before, had, in no measured terms, declared to be guilty
of the basest conduct and deserving of the severest punish-
ment. All that we know of Fox, all that we know of Burke
— and it is possible to know them almost as well as if they
were the figures of contemporary history — would seem to
deny the possibility of their condescending to any act of
conscious baseness. Stained and sullied as the youth of
Fox had been with some of the more flagrant vices of
a flagrantly vicious society, his record as gambler, as
spendthrift, and as libertine seems relatively clean in com-
parison with this strange act of public treason to the
chosen beliefs of his manhood, of public apostasy from
those high and generous principles by whose strenuous ad-
vocacy he had redeemed his wasted youth. Fiery as
Burke's temper had often proved itself to be, fantastic
and grotesque as his obstinacy had often showed itself in

228 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. i.vii.

clinging tleliantly to some crotchet or whimsey, that seemed
to the spectator unworthy the adhesion of his great in-
tellect, his most eccentric action, his most erratic impulse,
appeared sweetly reasonable and serenely lucid when con-
trasted with the conduct that allowed him to guide or he
guided by Fox in a course that proved as foolish as it
looked disgraceful, to lead or to follow Fox into packing
cards with their arch-enemy of the American war.

On the face of it there is nothing that seems not merely
to justify, but even to palliate, the conduct of Fox and
Burke. Ugly as the deed seemed to the men of their day,
to the men wdio believed in them, trusted them, loved them,
it seems no less ugly to those who at the distance of a cen-
tury revere their memories and cherish their teachings.
One thing may be, must be, assumed by those before whom
the lives of Fox and Burke lie bare — that men so animated
by high principles, so illuminated by high ideals, cannot
deliberately, of set purpose, have sinned against the light.
They must have felt, and strongly felt, their Justifica-
tion for entering on a course which was destined to prove
so disastrous. Their justification probably was the con-
viction, nursed if not expressed, that to statesmen whose
hands were so full of blessings, to statesmen, whose hearts
were so big with splendid enterprises, a trivial show of
concession, a little paltering wdth the punctilio of honor,
a little eating of brave words, and a little swallowing of
principle, was a small price to pay and a price well w^orth
paying for the immeasurable good that England was to
gather from their supremacy.

Whatever may have been the motives which induced Fox
and Burke to ally themselves with a discredited and de-
feated politician like Lord North, the results of that
alliance were as unsatisfactory to the high contracting
parties as the most rigid believer in poetic justice could
desire. The Coalition ^Ministry was unlucky enough in its
enterprises to satisfy (rcorge himself, who had talked of
going back to Hanover rather than accept its services, and
had only been dissuaded from self -exile by the sardonic
reminder of Lord Thurlow that it might be easier for the

1783. LEGISLATION OF THE COALITION MINISTRY. 229

King to go to Hanover than to return again to England.
Burke inaugurated his new career at the Pay Office by an
unhappy act of patronage. He insisted upon restoring to
their offices two clerks, named Powell and Bembridge, who
had been removed and arraigned for malversation, and he
insisted upon defendiug his indefensible action in the
House of Commons with a fury that was as diverting to
his opponents as it was distracting to his colleagues. Fox,
who had earned so large a share of public admiration for
his advocacy of what now would be called liberal opinions,
was naturally held responsible by the public for the suc-
cessful opposition of the Coalition Ministry to Pitt's plan
of Parliamentary reform.

Pitt's proposal was not very magnificent. He asked the
House to declare that measures were highly necessary to
be taken for the future prevention of bribery and expense
at elections. He urged that for the future, when the ma-
jority of voters for any borough should be convicted of
gross and notorious corruption before a select committee
of the House appointed to try the merits of any election,
such borough should be disfranchised and the minority of
voters not so convicted should be entitled to vote for the
county in which such borough should be situated. He
suggested that an addition of knights of the shire and of
the representatives of the metropolis should be made to
the state of the representation. He left the number to
the discussion and consideration of the House, but for his
own part he stated that he should propose an addition of
one hundred representatives. Pitt's scheme was scarcely
a splendid measure of reform ; but at least it was a measure
of reform, and it met with small mercy at the hands of
the coalition, being defeated by a majority of 293 to 149.
This was not an auspicious beginning for the new Minis-
try, and it was scarcely surprising that many of Fox's ad-
herents in the country should resent his employment of
the swollen forces that were practically if not technically
under his command to compass the defeat of a bill which,
however inadequate, did at least endeavor to bring about
a much-needed improvement.

230 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ltii.

The groat adventure of the Coalition Ministry, the
deed by which it hojoed to Justify its existence, and by
wliieh indeed it has earned its only honorable title to re-
membrance, was the bill which is known to the world as
Fox's India Bill. If the extending influence of England
in India was a source of pride to the English people, it
was also a source of grave responsibility. The conditions
under which that influence was exercised, the weaknesses
and inadequacies of the system by which the East India
Company exercised its semi-regal authority, were becoming
more apparent with every succeeding year to the small but
steadily increasing number of persons who took a serious
and intelligent interest in Indian affairs. A series of
events, to be referred to later, had served to force into a
special prominence the ditTiculties and the dangers of the
existing state of affairs and to fasten the attention of
thinkers upon the evils that had resulted, and the evils
that must yet result from its continuance. To mitigate
those evils in the present, and to minimize them in the
future. Fox, inspired and aided by Burke's splendid knowl-
edge of Indian affairs, worked out a measure which was
confidently expected to substitute order for disorder and
reason for unreason. In the November of 1783, Pitt ad-
dressed a challenge to the Ministry calling upon them to
bring forward some measure securing and improving the
advantages to be derived from England's Eastern posses-
sions, some measure not of temporary palliation and
timorous expedients, but vigorous and effectual, suited to
the magnitude, the importance, and the alarming exigen-
cies of the case. Fox answered this challenge by asking
leave to bring in a bill " for vesting the affairs of the East
India Company in the hands of certain commissioners for
the benefit of the proprietors and the public." At the same
time Fox asked leave to bring in another bill " for the bet-
ter government of the territorial possessions and depen-
dencies in India." These two bills, supplementing each
other, formed, in the opinion of those who framed and
who advocated them, a simple, efficient, and responsible
plan for the better administration of England's Indian de-

1783. FOX AND THE AFFAIRS OF INDIA. 231

pendencies. However tentative and incomplete they may
now appear as a means of dealing with a problem of such
vast importance and such far-reaching consequences^ they
certainly were measures the adoption of which must have
proved a gain to the country governing and to the country
governed.

The measures, which, it is probable, were originally
planned out by Burke, but to which it is certain that Fox
devoted all the strength of his intellect and all the en-
thusiasm of his nature, were of a daring and comprehen-
sive character. The first proposed to make a clean sweep of
the existing state of things in India by the appointment of
a Board composed of seven commissioners to whom abso-
lute authority over the East India Company's property, and
over the appointment or removal of holders of offices in
India, was to be intrusted for a term of four years. This
term of four years was not to be affected by any changes
of administration that might occur in England during the
time. The commerce of the Company was to be managed
by a council of directors, who were themselves entirely
under the control of the seven commissioners. The com-
missioners and the directors were required to lay their
accounts before the proprietors every six months, and be-
fore both Houses at the beginning of every session. The
commissioners were in the first instance to be appointed by
Parliament, that is to say, by the Ministry headed by Fox
and Xorth ; at the end of the four vears thev were to be
appointed by the Crown. The Court of Proprietors was
to fill up the vacancies in the council of directors. The
second and less important measure dealt with the powers
of the Governor-General and Council and the conduct to
be observed towards the princes and natives of India.

The first measure was the measure of paramount impor-
tance, the measure from which Fox and his friends hoped
so much, the measure which aroused in a very peculiar
degree the anger of the King and of the King's fol-
lowers. They saw in a moment the enormous influence
that the passing of the measure would place in the hands
of Fox. The names of the commissioners were left blank

232 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvii.

in the bill, but when their time came to be filled up in
committee they were all filled with the names of followers
of Fox. It was argued that were the bill to become law
a set of persons extremely olmoxious to the King would
have in their hands for a solid term of vears the entire
administration of India and the control of an amount of
patronage, estimated at not less than three hundred thou-
sand a year. This would enable them to oppose to the
royal prerogative of patronage an influence of like nature
that brought with it scarcely less than royal power. It is
scarcely surprising that Pitt should have employed all his
eloquence and all his energy against what he described as
" the boldest and most unconstitutional measure ever at-
tempted, transferring at one stroke, in spite of all charters
and compacts, the immense patronage and influence of the
East to Charles Fox in or out of office."

If Pitt was the most conspicuous opponent of the India
Bills, only less conspicuous was a man who, though much
Pitt's senior, was still young, and who had already made
himself prominent in the House of Commons, not merely
as a politician of general ability, but as one w^ho took a
special interest in the affairs of India. Henry Dundas had
been a characteristic ornament of the Scottish bar, at once
a skilful lawj^er and an attractive man of the w^orld when,
eight years before the existence of the Coalition Ministry,
he had come to St. Stephen's as Lord Advocate. An am-
bition to shine as a statesman and an extraordinary power
of application had equipped him with the varied informa-
tion that enabled him to assert himself as an authority in
many departments of national business. He had early
recognized the importance of India as a field for the powers
of a rising politician, and he had devoted to India and to
Indian affairs that tireless assiduity which permitted him
at once to appear a convivial spirit with the temperament
and leisure of a man of pleasure, and a master of pro-
found and intricate subjects, the secret of which was only
known to those who were acquainted with his habit of early
rising and his indefatigable capacity for work in the time
that he allotted to work. When the public attention was

1783. HENRY DUNDAS AND JAMES SAYER. 233

directed to India, towards the close of the American war,
and when a very general sense of indignation was aroused
by the mismanagement that lessened and that threatened
to destroy British influence in the East, Dundas came for-
ward with the confident air of one who was intimately ac-
quainted with the complicat(xl problem and who believed
himself perfectly competent to set all difficulties right. He
was the chairman of the select committee of the House of
Commons appointed to inquire into the causes of the war
in the Carnatic, and he impressed himself upon the House
as an authority upon India of no mean order, both in the
report from that committee and in a bill which he himself
introduced for the purpose of dealing with the Indian
question. He did not succeed in carrying his measure,
but he took care that his knowledge of his subject increased
in proportion to its growing importance in the public
view, and his ready eloquence and specious show of infor-
mation made him a very valuable ally for Pitt and a fairly
formidable opponent to Fox in the heady debates over the
measures to which the political honor of the dishonorable
coalition was pledged.

The India Bill had a more serious enemy than Dundas,
a more serious enemy than Pitt so far as the immediate
effect of enmity upon public opinion is to be estimated.
There was an attorney in London named James Sayer
whose private means enabled him to neglect his profession
and devote himself to the production of political carica-
tures and squibs. Sayer was one of the many who be-
lieved in the rising star of Pitt, and he proved his belief
by the publication of a caricature which Fox himself is
said to have admitted gave the India Bill its severest blow
in public estimation. This caricature was called " Carlo
Khan^s Triumphal Entry into Leadenhall Street." It
represented Fox in the grotesque attire of a theatrical
Oriental potentate, and with a smile of conquest upon his
black-haired face, perched upon an elephant with the
staring countenance of Lord iSTorth, that was led by Burke,
whose spectacled acridity was swollen with the blowing of
a trumpet from which depended a map of India. The

234 A UlSTOKV UF THE FOLK GEORGES. ch. lvii.

caricature was ingenious, timely, and extraordinarily ef-
ficacious in harming the measure and its champions. It
had an enormous sale ; it was imitated and pirated far and
wide. It carried to all parts of the kingdom the convic-
tion that Fox was aiming at nothing less than a dictator-
ship of India, and it intensified the general animosity
towards the measures and the men of the Coalition Min-
istry more effectively tlian any amount of speeches in
Westminster could have done. But it had no more power
to weaken the solid majority of the ^linistry in the House
of Commons than the hurried erudition of Dundas, or than
what Walpole called the " Bristol stone " of Pitt's elo-
quence as contrasted with the " diamond reason '' of Fox's
solid sense. Neither political caricature nor popular dis-
approval, neither the indignation of the King nor the
opulence of the fearful and furious East India Company,
could prevent Fox from carrying his measures in the House
of Commons by means of the sheer force of numbers that
he had obtained by his unhallowed compact with North.

But the power of the new Ministry was vulnerable in
another place where the most unconstitutional weapons
were employed against it. The King was eager to avenge
the affront that had, as he conceived, been put upon him
by the compulsion that had forced him to accept ministers
so little to his taste. He was prepared to stick at little in
order to retaliate upon his enemies, as he alwaj^s conceived
those men to be who ventured to cross his purposes. Noth-
ing could be done effectively to change the political com-
position of the Lower House; something could be essayed
with the reasonable hope of modifying the composition of
the Upper House. Lord Temple, a second-rate statesman,
v\'hose position gave him almost first-rate importance, was
the instrument by which the King was able to bring very
effective pressure upon the peers. George wrote a letter
to Lord Temple in which he declared that he should deem
those who should vote for Fox's measure as " not only not
his friends, but his enemies;" and he added that if Lord
Temple could put this in stronger w^ords " he had full au-
thority to do so." With this amazing document in his

1783. FALL OF THE COALITIOX MINISTRY. 235

possession Lord Temple went from one noble lord to
another^ pointing out the unwisdom of each in pursuing
a course which v/ould constitute him an avowed enemy of
the King, and insisting upon the advantages that must
follow from the taking of the very broad hint of the royal
pleasure thus conveyed. Temple's arguments, backed by
and founded upon the King's letter, had the most satis-
factory result from the King's point of view. Peer after
peer fell away from the doomed Ministry; peer after peer
hastened to prove himself one of the elect, to assert him-
self as a King's friend by recording his vote against the
obnoxious measure.

The course of action inspired by the King and acted
upon by Lord Temple was flagrantly unconstitutional even
in an age which permitted to the sovereign so much liberty
of personal intervention in affairs. It was, however, at-
tended with complete success. The India Bills were re-
jected in the House of Lords by a majority of nineteen,
and tliis defeat, which would not have been regarded in
more recent times as fatal to a Ministry, however fatal for
the time being to the measure thus condemned, was in-
stantly used by the King as a pretext for ridding himself
of the advisers whose advice he detested. The King re-
solved to dismiss the ministers, and to dismiss them with
every circumstance of indignity that should render their
dismissal the more contemptuous. On the midnight of
the day following the final defeat of the measure in the
House of Lords a messenger delivered to the two Secre-
taries of State, Fox and ISTorth, a message from the King
stating that it was his IMajesty's will and pleasure that
they should deliver to him the seals of their respective
offices, and that they should send them b}^ the Under-Sec-
retaries, j\Ir. Frazer and Mr. ISTepean, as a personal inter-
view on the occasion would be disagreeable to the King.
The seals were immediately sent to Buckingham House
and were promptly handed over by the King to Lord Tem-
ple, who on the following day sent letters of dismissal to
the other members of the Cabinet Council.

When the House of Commons met, under conditions of

23G A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvii.

keen excitement, Fox and Xorth took their seats on the
Front Opposition Bench with their vast majority behind
them eager to retaliate upon the King, who had defied
their voices and insulted their leaders. A young member,
Mr. Kichard Pepper Arden, rose in his place and moved
a new writ for the borough of Appleby, in the room of the
Right Honorable William Pitt, who had accepted the
ollice of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the
Exchequer. We are told that this motion was received
with loud and general laughter by the Opposition, who re-
garded Pitt's conduct as a piece of foolhardy presumption.
And indeed at first Pitt's position seemed difficult in the
extreme. It was hard to form a Government in the face
of a hostile majority in the Commons, and in the Lords
Pitt's perplexity was increased by Lord Temple's sudden
and sullen resignation of the office to which he had been
so newly appointed. Various reasons have been given for
Temple's mysterious and petulant behavior. Some have
thought that he resigned because he was in favor of an
immediate dissolution, while Pitt w^as opposed to such a
step. Others believe that he was eager for some high mark
of royal favor, possibly a dukedom, which was refused by
the King and not warmly advocated by Pitt. In spite of
all obstacles, however, Pitt succeeded in forming a Min-
istry, the best he could manage under the conditions. To
Shelburne he offered nothing, and this omission adds a
mystery greater than that of Temple's resignation to Pitt's
administration. It must have surprised Shelburne, as it
surprised every observer then and since. Pitt has been
accused of ingratitude to the man w^ho had been his
father's friend and to whom he himself had owed so short
a time before the leadership of the House of Commons.
But Pitt was not ungrateful. He was merely astute. He
read Shelburne as perhaps no other of his contemporaries
was able to read him, and he gauged him at his true value
or want of value. Shelburne's glittering unreality, his
showy unreliability, were to have no place in Pitt's scheme
of things. Abandoned by Temple, abandoning Shelburne,
Pitt went his own way, doing the best he could in the face

1784. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE GREAT SEAL. 237

of tremendous odds and doing it very well. One of his
first acts of office was to bring in an India Bill of his own,
which was decisively defeated in the Commons. For some
months Pitt fought his hard and thankless fight as a
minister with a minority behind him. At last, in the end
of March, he saw his opportunity for a dissolution and re-
solved to take it. A singular episode threatened to delay
his purpose. The Great Seal of England was stolen from
the house of the Lord Chancellor in Great Ormond Street,
and was never recovered. It may have been purloined by
some political partisan who believed, as James the Second
believed, that by making away with the Great Seal he could
effectively embarrass his opponents. But this " curious
manoeuvre,'^ as Pitt himself called it, was nullified by the
prompitude with which another Great Seal was made.

The result of the dissolution was as gratifying to Pitt
as it was disastrous to Fox. More than one hundred and
sixty of Fox's friends lost their seats and earned instead
the sobriquet of Fox's Mart3TS, and Fox himself had very
great difficulty in getting elected for the new Parliament.
So ended the unfortunate episode of the Coalition Minis-
try. Much as Fox had suffered from the sins of youth, he
was destined to suff'er even more from this error of his
manhood. For the rest of his life, save for a few months
towards its close, he was destined to remain out of office,
conscious of the great deeds he would have done and denied
the power to do them, while his antagonist Pitt lived
through long years of office, long years that were as event-
ful as any years and more eventful than most years in the
history of the country. Fox had run up a great debt for
a little power. He had paltered with his honor, with his
principles, with his public utterances; he had staked more
than he had a right to stake on success, and he had lost,
utterly and hopelessly. If every error in life has to be
paid for sooner or later, the price due from Fox for his
apostasy was very promptly demanded and was very heavy.

It is to be regretted that Pitt began his long period of
authority by an attempt as stubborn as it was ungenerous
to keep his great rival out of public life. The election for

238 A HISTORV OF THE FUUK CEORGES. cii. lvii.

P'ox's constituency of Westminster was one of the fiercest
conflicts in English histor}'. Every effort was made to
drive Fox out, every effort to put him in. Beautiful wom-
en— wliom I'itt described as " women of the people/' in
parody of the name they gave to Fox of " the man of the
l)cople " — bribed voters with kisses, while the friends of
Pitt rallied every man they could muster to the polling
booths. Fox was returned, but the unconstitutional con-
duct of the High Bailiff in granting the request of the
defeated candidate, Sir Cecil Wray, for a scrutin}', and in
refusing to make a return till the scrutiny was effected,
might have deprived Westminster for a season of any
Parliamentary representation, and w^ould have kept Fox
out of Parliament altogether if he had not been returned
for the Kirkwall Borough through the friendship of Sir
Thomas Dundas. Pitt unfortunately backed up the action
of the High Bailiff with a vehemence of zeal that suggested
rancor, and that failed of its purpose. Fox was in the
Commons to defend himself and his cause, and he did de-
fend himself with an eloquence that even he never sur-
passed, and that gave its additional glory to its ultimate
success.

However the generosity or the taste of Pitt's conduct
towards Fox in this instance might be questioned, there
could be no question as to the rare ability he soon made
proof of as a statesman and as a financier. During his few
and troubled months of office before the dissolution, he had
introduced an India Bill to take the place of that of Fox,
which the King and the Lords had shattered. This Bill
had been defeated by a majority of eight. He now intro-
duced what was practically the same measure, and carried
it triumphantly by a majority of more than two hundred.
It established that Board of Control and that double sys-
tem of government which existed, with some modifications,
until the Act of 1858, following upon the Indian Mutiny,
effected a radical revolution in the administration of In-
dia. The enemies of Pitt's measure declared that its abuse
of patronage was as flagrant as and more enduring than
that proposed by Fox, and for a long time public discon-

1784. FITT AS A FINANCIER. 239

tent expressed itself loudly against the extreme favor that
was shown to Scotchmen in the filling up of appointments.
The financial affairs of the country called for a bold
hand and found it. Lord North had muddled the finances
of England almost as completely and almost as hopeless-
ly as contemporary French financiers were muddling the
finances of France. Pitt faced something that w^as not
altogether unlike financial chaos with a courage which was
well and with a genius which was better. The picturesque
institution of smuggling, capitalized by wealth and rank
in London, and profitably employing some forty thousand
adventurous spirits, withered before the spell of Pitt's
dexterous manipulations. A window tax compensated for
a lightened tea duty that made smuggling merely a ridicu-
lous waste of time, and its most sinister effect may still
be noticed here and there in England in the hideous imita-
tions of windows painted on to the walls of houses to sup-
port a grotesque idea of harmony, without incurring the
expense of an actual aperture for light and air. Pitt
raised the loans necessary to meet the yawning deficit and
to minimize the floating debt, and he astonished his world
by introducing the amazing elements of absolute honesty
and admirable publicity into the transaction. The prin-
ciple of patronage that had made previous loans a scan-
dalous source of corruption was gallantly thrown overboard.
and the new minister announced to the general amazement
that the new loans would be contracted for with those who
ofiered the lowest terms in public competition. A glitter-
ing variety of new taxes, handled with the dexterity of a
conjuror, and extracting sources of revenue from sources
untaxed and very justifiably taxable, rounded off a series
of financial proposals that inaugurated brilliantly his ad-
ministration, and that had their abiding effect upon the
welfare of the countrv. The crown of his financial fame
was his plan for the redemption of the National Debt in-
troduced in 178G. His plan was based on the compara-
tively familiar idea of a sinking fund. Up to the time of
Pitt's proposal, however, such sinking fund as might exist
in a time of peace wap always liable to be taken over and

240 A IIISTORV OF TUE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvii.

made use of by the Government in a time of war. Pitt's
plan was to form a sinking fund which should be made
inalienable by an Act of Parliament until the Act creating
11 should be repealed by another Act of Parliament. For
this purpose Pitt created a Board of Commissioners con-
sisting of the Speaker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the Master of the Rolls, the Accountant-General, and the
Governor and Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England.
To this independent and distinguished body of men the
sum of one million sterling was to be handed over annu-
ally for the gradual redemption of the existing debt by the
purchase of stock.

The story of Pitt's early administration was not all a
record of success. For the last time, and unsuccessfully,
he attempted to bring about a Parliamentary reform. For
the first time, and no less unsuccessfully, he tried to bring
about that better understanding between England and Ire-
land which it was his merit always to desire, and his mis-
fortune never to accomplish. In spite of his genius, his
eloquence, and his popularity, his position in the House
of Commons was in a sense precarious. It was not merely
that he had the bad luck to be opposed by such a galaxy
of ability as has perhaps never before or since dazzled
from the benches of Opposition the e3'es of any minister of
Pitt's intellectual power. To be fought against relentless-
ly, tirelessly, by a Sheridan, a Burke, and a Fox would have
been bad enough for a statesman at the head of a large and
reliable majority and enjoying the uncheckered confidence
of his sovereign. But Pitt did not enjoy the uncheckered
confidence of the King, and Pitt's majority was not re-
liable. Lord Rosebery quotes an analysis of the House
of Commons dated May 1, 1788, recently discovered among
the papers of one of Pitt's private secretaries, which serves
to show how uncertain Pitt's position was, and how fluctu-
ating the elements upon which he had to depend for his
political existence. In this document the " Party of the
Crown " — an ominous term — is set down as consisting of
185 members, including " all those who would probably
support his Majesty's Government under any minister not

1788. PRIXCE GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK. 241

peculiarly unpopular." Xo less than 108 members are
set down as ""' independent or unconnected;" the party
ascribed to Fox musters 138, while that of Pitt is only
estimated at 52, with the minimizing comment that " of
this party, were there a new Parliament, and Mr. P. no
longer to continue minister, not above twenty would be
returned " In the face of difficulties like these Pitt stood
practically alone. His was no Ministry " of All the Tal-
ents;" the ranks of the ^linistry did not represent, even in
a lesser degree, the rich variety of ability that made the
Opposition so formidable.

If the King was at best but a lukewarm supporter of his
splendid minister, the heir to the throne was the minis-
ter's very warm and persistent enemy. \Yhen Pitt came
to power the Prince of \Vales was, and had been for some
time, a conspicuous figure in society, a fitful element in
political life, and a subject of considerable scandal to the
public mind. George the Third was not the kind of man to
be happy with or to bring happiness to his children. Pos-
sessed of many of those virtues which are supposed to
make for domestic peace, he nevertheless failed signally
to attach to himself the affection of his children. One
and all, they left him as soon as they could, came back to
him as seldom as they could. The King's idea of firmness
was alw^ays a more or less aggravated form of tyranny, and
he reaped in loneliness the harvest of his early harshness.
Between his eldest son and himself there soon arose and
long continued that feud between the reigning sovereign
and his heir which seemed traditional in the House of
Hanover.

George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, has many
claims to be regarded as perhaps the worst, and as certainly
the most worthless, prince of his House. Something was
to be excused in the son of such a father; some wild oats
were surely to be so'wn in the soil of a childhood so dully
and so sourly cultivated. But no severity of early sur-
roundings will explain or palliate the unlovely mixture
of folly and of falseness, of debauchery, vulgarity, prof-
ligacy, and baseness, which were the most conspicuous

242 A HISTORY OF TUE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvii.

characteristics of tlio Prince's nature. The malignant
cneniy of his unhappy father, the treacherous lover, the
perjured friend, a heartless fop, a soulless sot, the most
ungentlemanly First Gentleman of Europe, his memory
baffles the efforts of the sycophant and paralyzes the anger
of the satirist. Genius has wasted itself again and again
in the attempt fittingly to describe him. To Byron he
became " the fourth of the fools and oppressors called
George." Moore immortalized his "nothingness" as a
" sick epicure's dream, incoherent and gross." Leigh Hunt
went to prison for calling him a " fat Adonis of fifty."
Landor, in an epigram on himself and his royal name-
sakes as bitter as four biting lines could be, could find
nothing more bitter than to record his descent from earth,
and thankfulness to Heaven that with him the Georges
had come to an end. Thackeray abandoned in despair the
task of doing justice to his existence. " I own I once used
to think it would be good sport to pursue him, fasten on
him, and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to mount
and lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then to
hunt the poor game."

When Pitt became Prime Minister the Prince of Wales
was in Opposition, because he was opposed to his father.
He imagined himself to be the friend of Fox, of Sheridan,
of Burke, because Fox and Sheridan and Burke were un-
popular with the King. His career had been one of debt
and drunkenness, of mean amours and degrading pleas-
ures, when the son of Chatham passed from his studious
youth to the control of the destinies of England. Pitt was
called upon and refused to consent to a Parliamentary
appeal to the King for the payment of the Prince's debts.
Pitt could feel no courtier's sympathy for the unnatural
son, for the faithless Florizel of foolish Perdita Robinson,
for the perjured husband of Mrs. Fitzherbert. There can
be no doubt that in the December of 1785 the Prince of
Wales went through a ceremony of marriage, which could
not under the conditions constitute a legal marriage, with
Mrs. Fitzherbert, a beautiful young woman of a little more
than twenty-nine years of age, who had twice been widowed

1788. TALK OF A REGENCY. 243

and was a member of the Roman Catholic faith. The
town soon rang with gossip, and Avhat was gossip in the
drawing-rooms threatened to become a matter for " deli-
cate investigation " in the House of Commons. The denial
given by Fox in Parliament on the authority of the Prince
of Wales practically ended any attempt at public inquiry,
and almost broke the heart of Mrs. Fitzherbert. To her
the Prince of course promptly disavowed Fox, with whom
she immediately broke off all friendship. Fox himself, in-
dignant at the Prince's falsehood and at the base use which
had been made of his voice, shunned the Prince's society
for a long time, which might very well have been longer.
The scandal slowly ebbed; a compromise was arrived at
between the King and his son; the King made an appeal
to Parliament; and a sum of money was voted to deal with
the Prince's debts in consideration of his promises of re-
form in the future.

The Prince of Wales did not forget Pitt's attitude tow-
ards him, and the time soon arrived in which the min-
ister came near to feeling the force of the Prince's anger.
The health of the King was suddenly and seriously af-
fected. Soon after his reign began he had been afflicted
by a temporary loss of reason. The same misfortune now
fell upon him in the autumn of 1788. It became neces-
sary to make arrangements for the appointment of a re-
gent, and the necessity was the cause of a fierce Parlia-
mentary controversy. Fox rashly insisted that the Prince
of Wales had as much right to assume the reins of gov-
ernment as he would have had in the case of the death of
the monarch. Pitt maintained the more constitutional
opinion that it was the privilege of Parliament to appoint
a regent and to decide what powers should be intrusted
to him. However little the knowledge may have influenced
his action, Pitt knew very well that with the appointment
of the Prince of Wales as regent his own hold of power
would, for a time, come to an end. The whole question,
however, was suddenly set on one side by the unexpected
recovery of the King. The King's restoration to reason
was well for the minister, and undoubtedly well for the

244 A HISTORY OF TUE FOUR GEORGES. ch. Lvir.

kingdom. If Biirkc and Sheridan and Fox were avowedly
the Prince's friends in Parliament, his most intimate
friends, those who would be likely to prove influential in
his mimic Court, were men of a very different kind. These
were sucli men as George Hanger, the half-mad soldier, the
" Paragon of Debauchery," as the caricaturists labelled
the Prince's " confidential friend," who having been almost
everything from captain of Hessians to coal merchant, and
from recruiter for the East India Company to inmate of
a debtor's prison, ended his long and unlovely career by de-
clining to assume the title of Lord Coleraine, to which he
became entitled in 1814, ten years before his death. These
were such men as Charles Morris, the amiable Anacreon of
Carlton House, who made better punch and rhymed better
ballads than his fellows of that convivial age, and who
had the grace to expiate the ignoble noonday of his exist-
ence by an honorable evening. These were such men as
the queer gang of blackguards, ruffians, and rowdies who
haunted Brighthelmstone, the bad and brutal Richard
Barry, the " Hellgate " Lord Barrymore ; the Jockey of
Norfolk, with his hair grown gray in iniquities; Sir John
Lade, \\'hose wife had been the mistress of a highwayman ;
and the worst and basest spirit of the gang, the Duke of
Queensberry. Such were the men whom the Prince de-
lighted to make his companions; such were the men who,
if the' King's madness had persisted, would have hailed
with satisfaction the overthrow of Mr. Pitt.

It were needless to dwell further for the present upon the
adventures of the Prince of Wales, his amours, his debts,
his friendships, his fantastic pavilion at Brighton, or his
unhappy marriage in April, 1795, to his cousin, the Prin-
cess Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick. Twenty
years were to pass away before the recurrence of the King's
malady was to give his eldest son the show of power, and
in those twenty years the two political rivals — one of whom
was the greatest of his allies, and the other the greatest of
his adversaries — had passed away.

1782. THE BIRTH OF WARREN HASTINGS. 245

CHAPTER LVIII.

WARREN HASTINGS.

In the days when Clive was first winning his way to
fame in India there was another young Englishman serv-
ing John Company, whose ability attracted the notice and
gained the esteem of the conqueror of Dupleix. It is one
of the privileges of genius to discern the genius of others.
But even Clive, when he noted a young volunteer at Falta,
who seemed destined for better things than the handling
of a musket, cannot have dreamed that he was giving an
opportunity to a man whose name was to take as high a
rank in the history of India as his own, whose deeds were
to be no less fiercely battled over, whose part in the crea-
tion of a great Indian Empire was to be as illustrious.
All that India had been to Clive — a refuge, a battle-
ground, a theatre of great deeds, and unfortunately also
of great ofi'ences, the cause of almost unbearable triumph
and almost intolerable humiliation, all that in as great a
degree India was to be to Warren Hastings.

Warren Hastings was born in the December of 1732, in
Churchill, Oxfordshire, near Daylesford in Worcester-
shire. His family had been a good as it was an old family.
But it had come down in the world. It had grown poorer
and poorer as the generations rolled on, and that manor
of Davlesford which had been in the family in the davs
of the second Henry had passed in the year of Sheriffmuir
into the hands of a Gloucester merchant. When Warren
Hastings was born, the fortunes of the house had come to
a very low ebb indeed. Pynaston Hastings, Warren Has-
tings's father, was, perhaps, as imbecile a man as ever yet
was the means of bringing an illustrious son into the
world. He seems to have been weak, foolish, shiftless, as

240 A IIISTUKV OF THE FOUR GEOUCES. cii. lviii.

wortlik'ss as a man well could be who was not actually
a criminal. He had married very young, before he was
sixteen; his wife had died shortly after giving birth to
A\'arren Hastings. Pynaston nuirried again, entered the
( 'hurch, when he was old enough to take holy orders, and
drifted away into the West Indies into outer darkness and
oblivion, leaving children entirely dependent upon the
charity of relatives. That charity did not fail, though at
first it could be but meagrely extended. Warren Has-
tings's grandfather was desperately poor. All he could do
for his deserted grandchild was to place him at the charity
school of the village. There, habited almost like a beggar,
taught as a beggar, the companion of clowns and playfel-
low of rustics, the future peer of kings and ruler of rajahs,
the coming pro-consul who was yet to make the state of
England as imperial as the state of Rome, received his
earliest lessons in the facts of life, and dreamed his earliest
dreams. His were strange dreams. In sleep, says a Per-
sian poet with whom 3'Oung Hastings was afterwards doubt-
less acquainted, the beggar and the king are equal. If
Warren Hastings slept as a beggar, he certainly dreamed as
a king. We know, on his own statement, that when he was
but a child of seven he cherished that wild ambition which
was to lead him through so many glories and so many
crimes. We are familiar with the picture of the boy
leaning over the stream on that summer day, and looking
at the old dwelling of his race, and swearing to himself
his oath of Hannibal that some dav he would, if the stars
were propitious, win back his inheritance.

Somewhere about a 3^ear after this oath of Hannibal
the fortunes of the lad took a turn for the better. An
uncle, Howard Hastings, who had a place in the Customs,
was willing to give a helping hand to the son of his grace-
less brother. He brought Warren Hastings to London.
In London Warren Hastings was first sent to school at
Newington, where his mind was better nourished than his
body. In after life he used to declare that his meagre pro-
portions and stunted form were due to the hard living
of his Newington days. But the Newington days came to

1*750. WARREX HASTINGS'S EARLY LIFE. 247

an end. When he was some twelve years of age, his uncle
sent him to Westminster School, where his name is still
inscribed in letters of gold, and where his memory adds
its lustre to the historic associations of a place that is rich-
ly blessed with historic associations. Warren Hastinors
distinguished himself in the great school of Westminster,
as he had already distinguished himself in the little vil-
lage school of Daylesford. With his oath of Hannibal
burning in his mind, he seems to have determined to seek
success in all that he attempted, and to gain it by his in-
domitable energy and will. If he was brilliant as a schol-
ar, he was not, therefore, backward in those other arts
which school-boys prize beyond scholarship. He was as
famous on the river for his swimming and his boating as
he was famous in the classroom for his application and his
ability. His masters predicted for him a brilliant Univer-
sity career, and it is possible that Hastings may have seen
Daylesford Manor awaiting him at the end of such a
career, and have welcomed the prospect. But the life of
Warren Hastings was not fated to pass in the cloistered
greenness of a university or in the still air of delightful
studies. Howard Hastings died and left his nephew to the
care of a connection, a Mr. Chiswick, who happened to be
a member of the East India Company. Perhaps Mr. Chis-
wick resented the obligation thus laid upon him; perhaps,
as a member of the East India Company, he honestly be-
lieved that to enter its service was the proudest privilege
that a young man could enjoy. Whatever were his reasons,
he resolutely refused to sanction his charge's career at the
university, insisted upon his being placed for a season at
a commercial school to learn arithmetic and book-keeping,
and then shipped him oif out of hand to Bengal as an
addition to the ranks of the Calcutta clerks. Thus it
came to pass that Warren Hastings, like Clive, was sent to
India by persons in England who were anxious to get rid
of a troublesome charge. There were a good many per-
sons in the years to come who were very ready to curse the
obstinacy of the elder Clive and the asperity of Mr. Chis-
wick for sending two such terrible adventurers forth to

248 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ltiii.

the groat battle-field of India. The history of our Indian
Empire would certainly have been a very different story if
only ]\Ir. Clive had been more attached to his ne'er-do-well
son, and if only IMr. Chiswick had been better affected
towards his industrious charge. In the January of 1750
Warren Hastings said farewell to his dreams of a scholar's
garland in England and sailed for India. In the October
of the same year he landed in Bengal and altered the his-
tory of the world.

Gentlemen adventurers who went out to India in the last
century in the service of John Company seldom knew
much, or indeed cared much, al)out the condition of the
country which they were invading. They dreamed mostly
of large fortunes, fortunes to be swiftly made and then
brought home and expended splendidly to the amazement
of less fortunate stay-at-homes. For the past history of
India they did not care a penny piece. What to them
were the mythical deeds of Rama and of Krishna; what
to them the marches of Semiramis and Sesostris, or the
conquests of Alexander, or the fate and fortunes of the
ancient kingdoms of the Deccan and Hindostan? They
cared nothing for the spread of ^Mahommedan influence
and authority, the glories of the Mogul Empire, the fate
of Tamerlane, the fame of Aurungzebe. For them the
history of India began with the merchant adventurers of
1659 and the East India Company of 1600, with the grant
of Bombay to England as part of the dower which the
Princess of Portugal brought to Charles the Second. Nor
were they moved by imperial ambitions. It did not enter
into their heads to conceive or to desire the addition of a
vast Indian empire to the appanages of the English crown.
They cared little for the conflicting creeds of India, for
Brahmanism and Buddhism and Jainism and Hinduism
and the sects of Islam. They knew little of the differing
tongues talked over that vast continent, more than five
hundred in number, from the Hindi of one hundred mill-
ion men to the most restricted dialects of the mountains
of Assam and Nepaul. India for them meant the little
space of earth whore the English had a trading interest,

1750. SURAJ UD DOWLAH. 249

and the regions of the shadowy potentates beyond from
whom in some way or other money might be got.

When Warren Hastings landed in India the relations of
England and of Englishmen to India were just upon the
turn. The star of Clivers fortunes was mounting towards
its zenith; the fiery planet of Dupleix had begun to fail
and pale and fade. The policy which Dupleix had adopt-
ed, that policy of intrigue with the native princes of India,
the English East India Company had been forced in self-
defence and very reluctantly to adopt. Having adopted it,
the men of the English East India Company proved
themselves to be better players at the game than
Dupleix. Warren Hastings, driving his pen at a
desk in Calcutta, or looking after silk-spinning in the
factory of Kazim Bazar near Murshidabad on the Ganges,
was able to watch almost from its beginning the great po-
litical drama in which he was destined in his time to play
so great a part, and which was to end in giving England
a great Asiatic empire. When Suraj ud Dowlah declared
war against the English his first move was to fall upon
the Kazim Bazar settlement. Warren Hastings and the
other English residents were made prisoners and sent to
Murshidabad, where, through the intervention of the
Dutch Company, they were humanely treated. Then came
the madman's march on Calcutta, the horror of the Black
Hole, and the flight of the Governor and the Company's
servants to the little fort at Falta in the Hughli below
Calcutta. Communications were entered upon between
Governor Drake in Falta Island and Hastings at Murshi-
dabad with a view to coming to terms with Suraj ud Dow-
lah. Warren Hastings was already, however, developing
that genius for Oriental diplomacy which afterwards so
characterized his career. He v^as made aware of the
treason that w^as hatching against Suraj ud Dowlah in his
own court and among his own friends, and he was quite
ready to play his part and find his account in that treason.
Treason is a risky game for a political prisoner at a court
like that of Suraj ud Dowlah. Warren Hastings was quick-
witted enough to see that the sooner he got away from that

250 A HISTORY OF THE VOIR GEORGKS. ch. lviii.

court the better for himself. lie succeeded accordingly
in making his escape and joining the fugitives at Falta.
Here two things of moment happened to him. He mot
the woman who was to be his first wife, and he met the
great man who was to give him his first chance for fame.
Among the refugees from Calcutta was the widow of a
Captain Campbell. Warren Plastings fell in love with her,
and afterwards in an hour of greater security he married
her. He seem to have been very fond of her, to have
been very happy with her, but she died very poon after the
marriage, and the two children she bore him both died
young, and so that episode came to an end. The more mo-
mentous meeting was with Clive. "When the Madras ex-
pedition appeared in the Hughli, Warren Hastings volun-
teered to serve in the ranks, shouldered his gun, and took
his part in the fighting round Calcutta. But Clive's keen
e3TS discerned stuft' for better things than the sieging of
Indian forts in the young volunteer. When Suraj ud
Dowlah's defeat ended in Suraj ud Dowlah's death, and the
traitorous Mir Jaffier. sat on the throne in his stead, War-
ren Hastings was sent to the court of the new prince at
Murshidabad, originally as second to the Company's repre-
sentative, Mr. Scratton, and afterwards as sole representa-
tive.

At ^lurshidabad Warren Hastings had every oppor-
tunity to justify Clive's acumen in singling him out for
distinction. The post he held was one of exceptional diffi-
culty and delicacy. Mir Jaffier was not altogether an
agreeable person to get on with. The English in India
were taking their first lessons in Oriental intrigue. They
were learning that if it was not particularly difficult to
upset one tyrant and place another on his throne, it was not
always easy to keep that other on the throne, or at all safe
to rely upon his loyalty to the men who had brought about
his exaltation. Mir Jaffier was surrounded by enemies.
His court, like every other Oriental court, was honeycomb-
ed with intrigues against him. His English patrons, or
rather his English masters, proved to have an itching
palm. They were always wanting money, and Mir Jaffier

1762. CLIYE AND THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. 251

had not always got enough money in his treasury to con-
tent their desires. So he began to intrigue against the
English with the Dutch, and the English found him out
and promptly knocked him off his throne, and set up a nev/
puppet in his stead. By this time Clive had returned to
England, and the direction of the destinies of the East
India Company was in the hands of the Governor, ]\Ir.
Vansittart, a well-meaning man whose views were not the
views of Clive. Clive objected very much to the course
which the East India Company were pursuing. He wrote
a letter to the London Board rebuking in no measured
language the defects and evils of the Indian Administra-
tion. Once again Clive was the cause of Warren Has-
tings's advancement. The London Board ordered the in-
stant dismissal of all the officials who had signed Clive's
letter and Warren Hastings was appointed to fill one of
the vacant places.

The five years that elapsed between the departure of
Clive for England in 1760 and his return to India in 1765
are not years that reflect much credit upon the East India
Company's administration. They had suddenly found
themselves lifted from a condition of dependency and, at
one moment, of despair to a position of unhoped-for au-
thority and influence. Xew to such power, dazzled by such
influence, they abused the one and they misused the other.
But the part that Warren Hastings played during this un-
fortunate five years reflects only credit upon himself. The
vices of the East India Company were not his vices ; he was
no party to their abuse of their power, or their misuse of
their influence. When he was advanced from the Patna
agency, his place was taken by a Mr. Ellis, who seems to
have been exceptionally and peculiarly unfitted for the
delicate duties of his post. He appears to have carried on
all his negotiations and communications with the Nawab
Mir Kasim with a high-handed arrogance and an absence
of tact which were in their way astonishing. Eelations be-
tween the Nawab and Mr. Ellis, as the Company's repre-
sentative, became so strained that in 1762 Warren Hastings
was again sent to Patna to investigate the whole trouble.

252 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ltiii.

Clive's JTul.frnicnt was already justified : Warren Hastings's
ability had already found mueh of the recognition it de-
served; his twelve years of Indian life had changed him
from the adventurous, inex})erienced lad into the ripe and
skilful statesman upon whom his masters were confident
that they could rely in such a moment of emergency as
had now come.

It would have been better for the Company if they had
taken the advice that Warren Hastings gave in his report
on the quarrel between the Xawab on the one side and
]\Ir. Ellis on the other. He was a servant of John Com-
pany, but he was too good a servant not to see the faults
of his masters and the follies to which those faults were
leading. The Company had blundered very badly before
the coming of Clive ; had blundered through false security,
through negligence, through pusillanimity, through greed.
After the victories of Clive had placed the Board in
Leadenhall Street, and its representatives in India, on a
very different footing, the Company blundered through
rapacity, through selfishness, through the arrogance born
of an unforeseen success. All manner of oppressions and
injustices were committed under the powerful protection
of the English name. Hastings declared that the only way
of ending the difficulty was to come to some definite settle-
ment with the Xawab as to his authority on the one hand
and the Company's privileges on the other. Together
with ]\Ir. Vansittart, the Governor, Hastings visited the
Nawab, and a plan of conciliation was made by which the
rights of the Nawab and the rights of the Company were
duly apportioned and declared. But the headstrong Coun-
cil of the Company refused the propositions of Warren
Hastings and of Vansittart, and refused to make any con-
cessions to the ISTawab. The irritated Nawab retaliated
by abolishing all internal duties upon trade, by which
act he deprived the English of the unjust advantages for
which they had contended. It was now a question which
should attack the other first, and Mr. Ellis, hearing a
rumor of intended hostilities on the part of Mir Kasim,
attacked the Nawab, drove him out of his dominions and

1165-69. HASTINGS'S RETURN TO ENGLAND. 253

set up Mir Jaffier again for a time. Hastings protested
against these acts, and declared that he would have re-
signed but that he was unwilling to leave the Company
while engaged in a harassing war. But his position was
uncomfortable. His counsels and those of Mr. Vansit-
tart were unheeded. English aggression continued. Mr.
Vansittart left for England in 1764, and in the December
of that year Hastings followed him, glad to leave a scene
of so much disorder, a disorder that was to increase alarm-
ingly, until in the September of 1765 Clive reappeared
in India and set things straight again.

Of no period of Warren Hastings's life is less known
than of the four years which he spent in his native land — •
from 1765 to 1769. He did not return to England like
the traditional Nabob, with pockets overflowing with ru-
pees. He had not employed his time and his energies,
as so many other servants of John Company had done,
solely to the furthering of his own fortunes, and the fill-
ing of his own pockets. If he had sailed for India four-
teen years earlier as a penniless lad, he returned to Eng-
land comparatively a poor man. He had tried his hand
at commerce like every one else in India, but commerce
was not much in his line. He had the capacities of a
statesman, he had the tastes of a man of letters, but he
did not in any great degree possess the qualities that go to
make a successful merchant. It is even said that he had
to borrow the money to pay his passage home, and it
seems certain that when he was home, the generous way
in which he endeavored to assist his relations sorely taxed
his meagre means.

Hastings seems to have sought for distinction in the
career of a man of letters and not to have found it. The
ability which he displayed in administration and the writ-
ing of State papers and political correspondence vanished
whenever he attempted to produce work that made a
more ambitious claim to be considered literature. The
clearness of statement, the width of view, the logical form,
the firm grasp and profound knowledge which were charac-
teristic of the evidence he gave before the House of Com-

254 A IIISTOIiV UF THE FOUR GEOKGES. ch. lviii.

inons Coiniiiittee in 17G6, gave place to a thin and nigglint^
j)('dantry of style when he turned his pen to the essays
and the verses of a man of letters. Yet there were some
topics on which he was eminently qualified to write, and
by which, under happier conditions, he might have earned
distinction. While he was in India he had not allowed
his active mind to be entirely occupied with the duties of
his official career. That love of literature, that marvel-
lous capacity for acquiring knowledge, which had charac-
terized him in his Westminster school-days, remained with
him at the desk of the East India Company and in the
courts of Indian princes. He gave great attention to the
languages and the literatures of the East. Most of those
English who served their term in India contented them-
selves, when they troubled themselves at all about the
matter, with learning as much of the native vernaculars
with which they were brought into contact as was neces-
sary for the carrying on of a conversation and the giving
of an order. With such a measure of knowledge Warren
Hastings was not content. Pie studied Persian, the court-
ly language of India, closely; he read much in its enchant-
ing literature. When he came back to England in 1765
he was possessed of a knowledge of the most beautiful of
the Eastern languages, as rare as it was useless then for an
English man of letters to possess.

Almost a century later the great American transcenden-
talist, Emerson, prophesied a rise of Orientalism in Eng-
land, and he lived to see his words come true. But in the
days when Warren Hastings was striving to make his way
in London as an author, the influence of the East upon
literature, upon scholarship, upon thought, was scarcely
perceptible. People read indeed the " Arabian Nights "
in M. Galland's delightful version; read the Persian tales
of Petit de la Croix; read all the translations of the many
sham Oriental tales which the popularity of Galland and
Petit de la Croix had called for in Paris, and which the
Parisian writers were ready to supply. But serious Orien-
tal scholarship can hardly be said to have existed in Eng-
land. Sir William Jones was the only Englishman of dis-

1769. WARREN HASTINGS AS AN ORIENTAL SCHOLAR. 255

tinction who was earnestl}^ devoted to Eastern studies;
but his Persian Grammar, which was in some degree the
foundation-stone of Persian scholarship in England, had
not yet appeared, and Sir William Jones was still writing
to Eeviczki those delightful letters in which he raves about
the poetry of the Arabs and the Persians. Thus the
scholarship of Warren Hastings placed him in an ex-
ceedingly small minority among Englishmen of letters.
Hastings was not the man to be alarmed or discouraged
by finding himself in a minority. He was as impassioned
an admirer of Persian poetry as Sir William Jones; he
considered that the Persian language should be included
in the studies of all well-educated men; he dreamed of
animating the waning fires of Oriental learning at Ox-
ford. He had a vision in his mind of a new scholarship,
to be called into being by the generosity of the East India
Company. He thought of Englishmen becoming as famil-
iar with the deeds of Eustum as with the wrath of Achil-
les, as intimate with the Ghazels of Hafiz as with the Odes
of Horace. He seems to have visited Dr. Johnson in the
hope of securing him as an ally in his scheme. The scheme
came to nothing, but the learning, the literary taste, and
scholarly ambition of Hastings made a strong impression
upon Johnson, who entertained a stately regard for the
young man from India.

It soon became plain to Warren Hastings that he was not
going to make much of a livelihood either by Persian
poetry or by the calling of a man of letters. His thoughts
had turned back to India within a year of his return to
England, and he had applied for employment to the Com-
pany, but for some reason his request was not granted.
In 1768, however, the Court of Directors appointed him to
a seat in Council at Madras, and early in the following
year, 1769, he sailed again for India on his most mo-
mentous voyage. Xot only was that ship, the " Duke of
Grafton," bearing him to a career of the greatest glory
and the greatest obloquy; not only was it carrying him
to a grandeur and a fall almost unparalleled in the history
of men who were not monarchs. On board the " Duke of

256 A HISTOKV OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lviu.

Grafton " Warren Hastings was to meet with one of the
most serious inliuenccs of liis life. We have already seen
how Hastings had married, had been a father, and how
wife and children had passed out of his life and left him
alone. Hastings was a man of strong emotions. Now he
met a woman who awoke all the strongest emotions of his
nature and won his devotion for the rest of his life. The
Baroness von Indioff was a young, beautiful, attractive
woman, married to a knavish adventurer.

It is certain that she and Hastings felt a warm attach-
ment for each other; it seems certain that Imhoff connived
at, or at least winked at, the attachment. It may be that
the understanding between Hastings and Imhoff was in
this sense honorable — that the Baron was willing to free
his wife from an unhappy union that she might form a
happy union. It may be that Hastings's passion was in-
deed, in Macaulay's fine phrase, " patient of delay. '^ The
simple facts that call for no controversy are that Hastings
met the Baroness von Imhoff in 1769 ; that eight years
later, in 1777, Imhoff, with the aid of Hastings's money,
obtained his divorce in the Franconian Courts, and that
the woman who had been his wife became the wife of Has-
tings. She made him a devoted wife; he made her a de-
voted husband. Hastings was never a profligate. In an
age that was not remarkable for morality his life was
apparently moral even to austerity. His relationships
with the Imhoffs constitute the only charge of immorality
that has been brought against him, and the charge, at
least, is not of the gravest kind. If Anglo-Indian society
was at first inclined to be uncharitable, if the great ladies
of its little world held aloof in the beginning from the
Baroness von Imhoff, her marriage with Hastings seems
to have restored her to general favor and esteem.

Warren Hastings found plenty of work cut out for
him on his return to India. He had his own ideas, and
strong ideas, about the necessity for reforms. He was
much opposed to the policy of sending out as secretaries
to the local governments men who were without local ex-
perience and therefore less likely to take a warm interest

1771. HASTINGS'S GREAT ADMINISTRATIVE QUALITIES. 257

in the Company's welfare, while such appointments were
in themselves unjust to the claims of the Company's own
servants. He vehemently urged the necessity for making
the rewards of the service more adequate to the duties
of the service, and he announced himself as deter-
mined to do all he could for "^ the improvement of the
Company's finances, so far as it can be effected without
encroaching upon their future income." If Hastings
could scheme out needed reforms on his way out, he found
on his arrival that the need for reform was little short of
appalling. The position which Hastings held was a cu-
rious one. He was President of the Council, it is true,
but president of a council of which every member had an
equal vote, and many of the members of which had per-
sonal reasons for wishing to oppose the reforms that Has-
tings Avas coming out to accomplish. A disorganized gov-
ernment had to be reorganized, an exhausted exchequer
to be refilled, a heart-breaking debt to be reduced, and
all this had to be done under conditions that well might
have shaken a less dauntless spirit than that of Warren
Hastings.

Warren Hastings was never for one moment shaken.
In a very short space of time he had greatly bettered the
administrative svstem, had fostered the trade of the coun-
try by the adoption of a uniform and low Customs duty,
and had greatly furthered the establishment of civilized
rule in the province conquered by Clive. He accomplished
this in the face of diiliculties and all dissensions in his own
Council, against subtle native intrigues, against opposi-
tion open and covert of the most persistent kind. Every
creature who throve out of the disorganization of India
naturally worked, in the daylight or in the dark, against
Hastings's efforts at organization. In 1771, when he was
made Governor of Bengal, he had attempted much and
succeeded in much. He fought hard with the secret terror
of dacoity. Having given Bengal a judicial system, he pro-
ceeded to increase its usefulness by drawing up a code of
]\Iohammedan and Hindu law. For the former he used
the digest made by command of Aurungzebe; for the

VOL. III. — 9

258 A niSTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ltiii.

second lie employed ten learned J'undits, the result of
whose labors was afterwards translated into English bv
II allied, who had been the friend of Sheridan and his
rival for the hand of ^liss Linley.

The work which Warren Hastings accomplished in In-
dia must be called gigantic. He created organization out
of chaos; he marched straightforward upon the course
which Clive had already marked out as the path of the
East India Company's glory. The East India Company
was not very eager to advance along that path. Hastings
spurred its sluggish spirit, and, though he was not able
to do all that his daring nature dreamed of, he left behind
him a long record of great achievements. The annexation
of Benares, the practical subjection of Oude, the extension
of British dominion, the triumphs of British arms, must
be remembered to the credit of Warren Hastings when his
career as a great English adventurer is being summed up.
That British Empire in India for which Clive unconscious-
ly labored owes its existence to-day in no small degree to
the genius, to the patience, and to the untiring energy of
Warren Hastings.

The two heaviest charges levelled against Warren Has-
tings are in connection with the Eohilla war and with the
trial of Nuncomar, now better known as Nand Kumar.
The genius of Burke and the genius of Macaulay have
served not merely to intensify the feeling against Hastings,
but in some degree to form the judgments and bias the
opinions of later writers. But it is only due to the memory
of a great man to remember that both in the case of the
Eohilla war and in the case of Nand Kumar there were two
sides to the question, and that Hastings's side has not
always been investigated with the care it deserves. The
adversary who denounced him in the House of Commons
and impeached him in Westminster Hall, the adversary
who assailed him with a splendid prose, were alike inspired
by a longing for justice and a hatred of oppression. But
it should be possible now, when more than a century has
passed since the indictment of the one and well-nigh half
a century since the indictment of the other, to remember

1778. HASTLVGS AND THE ROHILLA WAR. 259

that if Hastings cannot be exculpated there is at least a
measure of excuse to be offered for his action.

There is much to be said from a certain point of view in
defence of Warren Hastings^s action with regard to the
Rohilla war. The Kohilla chiefs were no doubt a danger
to the Nawab of Oude, whom Hastings regarded as a use-
ful ally of the Company. By the conquest of Rohilkhand
Hastings hoped to obtain for that ally a compact State
shut in effectually from foreign invasion by the Ganges
all the way from the frontiers of Behar to the mountains
of Thibet, while at the same time this useful ally would
remain equally accessible to the British forces either for
hostilities or protection. Put in this way the case seemed,
no doubt, plausible enough to Hastings, and to all who
thought with Hastings that Indian chiefs and princes were
but pieces on a board, to be pushed this way or that way,
advanced or removed altogether at the pleasure and for
the advantage of the English resident and ruler. But what
actually happened was that Hastings, in defiance of the
whole principle of the Company's administration in India,
interfered in the contests of native races and lent the force
of English arms to aid a despot in the extirpation of his
enemies. It is not to the point to urge that the Eohillas
were not undeserving of their fate. Even if the Rohillas
were little other than robber chiefs, even if their existence
constituted a weak point in the lines of defence against
the ever-terrible Mahrattas, all this did not in the eyes
of Burke and of those who thought with Burke justify
Hastings in lending English arms for their extermination
and receiving Indian money for the loan. They saw an
act of hideous injustice and corruption where Hastings
saw merely a piece of ingenious state policy. He gave the
troops, he got the money. The Rohillas were destroyed
as an independent power, and the Company was richer
than it had been before the transaction by some four hun-
dred thousand pounds.

The story of Xand Kumar comes into the history as the
result of an organic change in the composition and ad-
ministration of the East India Company. North's Regu-

OGO A ntSTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. mil.

Jaliii^^ All of 1773 made many changes in the administra-
tion of English India. The changes that most directly
concerned Hastings converted the Governor of Bengal into
a Governor-General, and reduced his Council to four mem-
bers. Tlie Governments of Madras and Bombay were
placed under the joint control of Governor-General and
Council. Hastings was appointed, naturally enough, to be
the new Governor-General. His four councillors were
Richard Barwell, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and
l*hilip Francis. Barwell was the only one who was a
member of Hastings's old Council. The three others were
in England ; they had been chosen expressly to guide In-
dian policy in accordance with the views of the home Gov-
ernment. Clavering and Monson had already earned some
distinction of a soldierly kind; Francis was by far the
ablest of the three. The author of the " Letters of
Junius " was much of a scholar and something of a states-
man, but he was a man of a fierce and unbending temper,
prompt to quarrel, hotly arrogant in argument, unrelent-
ing in his hatred of those who crossed his purposes.

These were not the kind of men with whom Hastings
was likely to get on, and from the moment of their land-
ing in India, where they complained that they were not re-
ceived with sufficient ceremony, they and Hastings were
furiously hostile. The meetings of the Governor-General
and his Council became so many pitched battles, in which
Hastings, aided only by Barwell, fought with tenacity and
patience against men whose determination appeared to be
in every possible instance to undo what he had done, and
to oppose what he proposed to do. They treated him as
if he were little better than a clerk in the Company's ser-
vice; they acted as if their one purpose was to drive him
out of pul)lic life.

As soon as it was plain that the new men of the new
Council were hostile to Pla stings, Hastings's enemies were
eager enough to come forward and help in the work. One
of Hastings's oldest and bitterest enemies was the Brahmin
Nand Kumar. ISTand Kumar had always been hostile to
Hastings. Now, when Hastings was in danger, was threat-

1775. CHARGES AGAINST HASTINGS. 261

ened with defeat and with disgrace, Nand Kumar came for-
ward with a whole string of accusations against him, ac-
cusations to which Francis, Clavering, and Monson listen-
ed eagerly. Nand Kumar accused Hastings of man}' acts
of shameless bribery, declared that he himself had bribed
him in large sums, and produced a letter from a native
princess in which she avowed that she had bribed Has-
tings in large sums. The three councillors appear to have
accepted every word uttered by jSTand Kumar as gospel
truth. Hastings, on his side, refused to be arraigned at
his own Council-board by a man whom he alleged to be
of notoriously infamous character, though he and Barwell
were perfectly willing that the whole matter should be re-
ferred to the Supreme Court. At last Hastings withdrew
from the Council, followed by Barwell. The others im-
mediately voted Clavering into the chair, summoned Nand
Kumar before them, listened to all that he had to say, and
on that evidence, in the absence of the accused man, the
self -constituted tribunal found Hastings guilty of taking
bribes from the princess, and ordered him to repay the
sum of thirty-five thousand pounds to the public treasury.
For the moment it seemed as if Francis and his party
had carried the day. I Castings had his back to the wall,
he seemed to be well-nigh friendless. The triumvirate de-
clared that there was no form of peculation from w^hich
Hastings had thought it reasonable to abstain, and they
formally charged him with having acquired by peculation
a fortune of no less than forty lakhs of rupees in two years
and a half. Suddenly, when the position of Hastings ap-
peared to be at its worst, it changed. Nand Kumar and
two Englishmen named Fowke, who had been very zealous
against Hastings, w^re charged before the Supreme Court
with conspiracy, in having compelled a native revenue
farmer to bear false witness against Hastings. The Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court was Elijah Impey, Hastings's
old and attached friend, a circumstance of which much
has been made. While Nand Kumar was bound over for
trial on the charge of conspiracy, another and more serious
charge was brought against him by a native attorney, who

262 ^ HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvih.

accused him of forging and publishing a bond. On this
charge Nand Kumar was arrested, and after a lengthy
hearing of the case committed to the common jail.

There is nothing very surprising in this charge of for-
gery. Forgery was not a very serious crime in the eyes of
such men as either Nand Kumar or his accuser. It was
made plain that, whether he had forged the bond or no,
he had forged the letter from the princess upon which the
charge against Hastings was based, for the princess her-
self declared it to be a forgery. It had aroused some sus-
picion even before the disclaimer, on account of the sig-
nature, which did not resemble her signature in undoubt-
ed and authentic communications. On the question of the
forged bond Nand Kumar was duly and apparently fairly
tried. It was not very much of a charge. The business
was very old. The native attorney had been seeking for
some time to bring Nand Kumar to trial, and had only
substituted a criminal for a civil suit when, the establish-
ment of the Supreme Court enabled him to do so.

Nand Kumar's trial ended in conviction, and conviction
for forgery brought with it by the English law sentence
of death. Whatever may be thought of the crime of for-
gery in England, it certainly was not looked upon in India
by Indians as a criminal offence of a kind that called for
the severest penalty of the law. But Nand Kumar had
been tried by English law. His judges, in order to show
their fidelity not merely to the spirit but to all the forms
of English law, had worn their heavy wigs all through the
torrid heat of those Calcutta June days. By the English
law he was convicted and sentenced to death. The tri-
umvirate made little or no attempt to save the man on
whose word they had relied. On August 5, 1775, Nand
Kumar was hanged on the Maidan outside Calcutta. He
met his death with the composed courage of a man who
looked upon himself as a martyr. Whatever his offences
may have been, he had done nothing which in his own
eyes, or in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, called for
the pitiless punishment which fell upon him.

Of course, the important question is how far, if at all,

1775. THE EXECUTION OF NAND KUMAR. 263

Hastings was concerned in the death of Nand Kumar.
That is just the question which it is impossible to answer
definitely. The certain facts are that Nand Kumar was
Hastings's enemy, that Impey was Hastings's friend; that
at a moment of grave crisis in Hastings's life, when Nand
Kumar was the most eminent witness against his name
and fame, that witness was arraigned on a charge that was
very old, that had been suddenly converted from a civil
to a criminal charge; that he w^as tried, found guilty, and
executed. On the basis of that bare narrative of facts it
would seem that if Hastings had nothing to do with the
mattei', he might almost as well have had as far as the
judgment of posterity went. The thing was too apt, the
conditions too peculiar not to leave their stigma upon the
memory of the man who gained most by them.

At the same time it must be remembered that, however
black the arguments against Hastings may seem, there is
no positive proof that he was directly implicated in what
his finemies called the judicial murder of Nand Kumar.
It must be remembered that the writer who has gone most
deeply into the whole ugly story, Sir James Stephen, in
his careful " Story of Nuncomar," has after long and ex-
haustive analysis of every particular of the case recorded
his judgment in favor of Impey and of Hastings. Sir
James Stephen's judgment is not final, indeed, but it
must have weight with any one who attempts impartially
to appreciate two public men who have been accused for
more than a century of a terrible crime. Sir James Stephen
believes that Nand Kumar's trial was perfectly fair, that
Hastings had no share whatever in the prosecution, and
that there was no collusion of any kind between Hastings
and Impey with regard to the trial, the verdict, or the
execution. Every one must form as best he may his own
judgment upon the matter and the men; but Sir James
Stephen's opinion is one that must be taken into account
in any attempt to decide.

The death of Nand Kumar did not end the struggle
between Hastings and his three antagonists. While they
made no further attempt of a like kind — the fate of Nand

264 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lvhi.

Kniiiar, said Franciy, would prevent any further native
information against the Governor-General — they still
resolutely strove by all possible means to cross and check
him. It is not necessary to follow in all their mean and
wearisome details the particulars of that prolonged con-
flict. The odds were against Hastings until the death of
Monson, when, by means of his own casting vote and the
adhesion of Barwell, Hastings found himself the master
of the majority at the Council-table. But the persistence
of the attacks had their result at home, where an ill-advised
offer of resignation made by Hastings was seized upon by
the Directors of the Company. The resignation was ac-
cepted, Wheler was appointed Governor-General in his
stead, and pending his arrival in India the post was to be
filled by Clavering.

This was a severe blow for Hastings. At first he thought
of yielding to it, in which case his career in India would
have been closed. But Clavering's indecent eagerness to
seize upon the Governor-Generalship before it was fairly
vacant forced Hastings to defiance. He refused to sur-
render his office to Clavering. Clavering called upon the
army to support him. Hastings called upon the army to
stand fast by him. The army followed Hastings, and the
support of the men of the sword was follow^ed by the
support of the men of the robe. The judges of the Su-
preme Court backed up Hastings and censured Clavering,
and a little later Clavering's death left Hastings for the
time supreme in the Council-chamber. His supremacy
was contested after the arrival of Wheler, w^ho immediately
sided with Francis against Hastings. But the supremacy
was not overthrown. Hastings was in the majority; he
would not allow the alliance of Francis and Wheler to im-
pede him in his purposes, and he stuck to his post as Gov-
ernor-General.

The East India Company made no effort to enforce his
resignation. The Court of Directors resented his conduct,
and found fault with him persistently, but they could not
overlook his influence with the Court of Proprietors, and
the condition of affairs in India was too grave to make the

1702-82. HAIDAR THE BITTER ENEMY OF THE ENGLISH. 265

dismissal of Hastings wise or politic. The Government
bore Hastings little love, and the King in particular was
much incensed at his refusal to resign, and was all for his
recall and the recall of Barwell who had abetted, and the
judges who had supported him. But the struggle with the
American colonies absorbed the attention of the Adminis-
tration too closely to allow them to interfere so markedly
in the affairs of India at a moment when interference
might perhaps have a result not unlike the civil war.

English opposition was not the only difficulty that War-
len Hastings had to contend with. Like the monarch in
the Arabian tale who discerns armies marching against
his capital from every point of the compass, Hastings
found enemies rising up against him in all directions. A
league of three native powers menaced the safety of the
British possessions. The Mahratta states combined with
the Nizam of the Deccan. Both again combined with
a new power whose rise had been as rapid as it was alarm-
ing, the Mohammedan power of Haidar in Mysore. When
Warren Hastings arrived in India the second time Haidar
was in his sixty-seventh year. He was born in 1702 as the
son of a Mogul officer in the Punjaub. At his death
Haidar held a rank somewhat similar to that of a captain
in the service of the Emperor of Delhi. Haidar deemed,
and rightly deemed, that there was little or no opportunity
for his ambition in that service, and his eyes seeking for
a better chief, found the man in Nunjeraj, the nominal
vizier and real ruler of the Kajah of Mysore. In 1750
Haidar persuaded the troops under his command to leave
their Mogul prince and take service with the sovereign of
Mysore. Under that sovereignty he rose rapidly to dis-
tinction. Though he was little better than a robber chief-
tain, the ablest and most daring robber of a horde of rob-
bers, his power grew so rapidly that in time he was able
to supplant Nun j era j, and in the end to usurp the sov-
ereignty of Mysore in 1761.

Haidar had his bitter grudge against the English. In
1771 he had been badly beaten by the ^lahrattas and had
appealed to the English to help him, as they had under-

266 A HISTORY OF THE TOUR GEORGES. ch. lviii.

taken by treaty to do. But the help was refused to the de-
feated prince, and the defeated prince swore an oath of
vengeance against the English, and when the time seemed
ripe he did his best to keep his oath. When in 1779 France
declared war against England, Haidar declared in favor
of the French. He gave his sword to the service of the
Grand Confederacy in 1778 and prepared to march upon
Madras. The President and the Council were taken un-
awares. It was not until Haidar had marched with fire
and sword into the Carnatic, and that the smoke of the
villages he destroyed in his progress could be seen from
Madras, that they learned that Haidar was in earnest and
not merely making a menace in the hope of frightening
the English into an advantageous treaty. Hastings him-
self seems to have been convinced that Haidar did not
mean to attack the Company, but when the Mysore prince's
purpose was plain every effort was made to stay his onset.
Lord ^facartney, although not one of the Company's ser-
vants, was made Governor of Madras. Haidar w^as com-
pelled for the time to abandon his attempt upon the Car-
natic. In 1782 his hatred of the English w^as ended by his
sudden death. But he bequeathed it as a rich legacy to his
son Tippu, a man as daring and as ambitious as his sire.

Hastings won away by concessions the Mahrattas and
the Xizam from the cause of Tippu. But Tippu had his
French allies, and Tippu and his French allies carried on
a campaign successful enough to force the English prac-
tically to appeal for a peace, which Tippu accorded in a
treaty flattering at once to his pride and to his ambition.
It was a somewhat dearly bought peace for the English,
for Tippu, regarding the advances of the English as a
proof of their weakness, made demands far more arrogant
than his successes justified, and those demands were agreed
to by the English envoys. The treaty with Tippu had to
be made on a basis of mutual restitution of conquests, so
that England was left at the end of the struggle against
Mysore with a great loss both of men and money, and no
advantages, territorial or strategical, to set against the loss.
Even the peace upon these terms obtained did not prove

1780. HASTINGS AND FRANCIS FIGUT A DUEL. 267

9 lasting peace. Tippu was not unnaturally tempted by
the concessions of the English into further displays of
arrogance which in time inevitably resulted in another
war. But by the time that war broke out Warren Has-
tings had returned to England and had no further personal
concern with the affairs of British India.

In the mean time Hastings's feud with his antagonists
on the Council-board continued. A kind of reconciliation,
a kind of agreement with Francis, enabled Hastings to al-
low Harwell to return to England and still to leave the
Governor-General in authority at the Board. But Hastings
found that reconciliation or agreement with Francis was
practically impossible. Rightly or wrongly, Francis re-
newed his old policy of attacking every proposal and in-
terfering with every project that Hastings entertained. At
last the long quarrel came to a violent head. Hastings re-
plied to one of Francis's minutes in some severe words, in
which he declared himself unable to rely upon Francis's
word, as he had found Francis to be a man devoid of truth
and honor.

Such a charge made in those days was generally to be
met with in only one way. In that way Francis met it.
Francis challenged Hastings to a duel. Hastings accept-
ed the challenge. The antagonists met, exchanged shots,
and Francis fell severely wounded before the pistol of
Hastings. Hastings sent friendly messages to Francis
and offered to visit him, but Francis rejected his overtures
absolutely, and on his return to health renewed his attacks
upon Hastings until the close of the year, when he sailed
for England to carry on more successfully his plans
against his enemy.

Well as the Supreme Court had served Hastings in the
case of Nuncomar and in the quarrel with Clavering, the
time came when Hastings found himself placed in a posi-
tion of temporary hostility to that Court and to his old
friend Impey. The bad machinery of the Act of 1773 left
room for almost every possibility of friction between the
Supreme Court on the one hand and the Council on the
other, instead of framing, as it should have framed, its

2C8 A HISTORY OF TUE FOUR GEORGES. en. lviii.

nioasiirc so as to allow the two powers to work harmonious-
ly top^cthcr, each in its own sphere, for the welfare of
British India. The friction grew more intense as time
went on. Sometimes one party to the quarrel was in the
right, sometimes the other. Whichever was the case, the
spectacle of the quarrel was in itself sufficiently humili-
ating and sufficiently dangerous. Hastings devised a
scheme for the better regulation of the powers and privi-
leges of the two conflicting bodies, but his scheme was put
on one side by the British Government, and the Court
and the Council remained as irreconcilable as before.
At last it reached such a pitch that the Court issued a
summons against the Government. The Government ig-
nored the summons; things stood at a dead-lock; the per-
sonal relationships of Hastings and Impey were strained
almost to severance. In this crisis Hastings thought of
and carried out a compromise. He offered to Impey the
presidency of the Company's chief civil court. Impey ac-
cepted the offer, and, though he has been severely censured
for what has been called the taking of a bribe, the com-
promise proved to be the best way out of the difficulty that
had arisen. Impey, who has been happily called the first
of Indian codifiers, showed himself to be an excellent head
for the provincial courts that were thus put under his
control. The provincial courts had been hitherto more of a
curse than a blessing; under Impey's guidance they were
brought into harmony wdth the Supreme Court. Impey
was not long suffered to remain in his new office. Two
years after his acceptance of the post he was removed from
it by order of the Court of Directors. But the work he
had done in that short time was good work and left abiding
traces. Hastings's plan had borne fruit in Impey's
" Code," and afterwards in the passing of an Act of Par-
liament clearly defining the jurisdiction and the powers
of the Supreme Court.

One of the latest acts of Warren Hastings's administra-
tion was also one of the acts that most provoked the in-
dignation and the resentment of those who in England
were watching with hostile eyes the progress of his career.

1781. HASTINGS AND THE RAJAH OF BENARES. 269

Chait Singh, the Eajah of Benares, held authority at first
under the ruler of Oude, and afterwards under the govern-
ment of the East India Company, to whom the sovereign
of Oude had transferred it. The Rajah of Benares paid a
certain tribute to the Company. The heavy necessities of
the war compelled Hastings to call upon the Rajah for a
larger sum. The step was not unusual. In time of war a
vassal of the Company might very well expect to be called
upon for an increased levy. But the Rajah of Benares was
very unwilling to give this proof of his devotion to the
Company. He demurred, temporized, promised aid of men
and arms, which was never rendered. Hastings seems to
have been convinced, first of all, that the Rajah was pos-
sessed of enormous wealth, and could well afford to pay
heavily for the privilege of being ruled over by the Com-
pany, and in the second place that it was necessary for the
power and influence of the Company to force the almost
mutinous Rajah to his knees. He made a final demand
for no less than fifty lakhs, or half a million pounds, and
set off himself for Benares to compel the Rajah to obey.

Hastings never wanted courage, but his Benares expedi-
tion was certainly the most daring deed of his whole life.
He entered the sacred city of Benares attended by an escort
of a mere handful of men, and in Benares, in the midst
of a hostile population, and practically in the power of the
Rajah, he acted as if he were the absolute master of prince,
people, and city. He insisted upon his full demands being
complied with, and as the Rajah's reply appeared to be un-
satisfactory he immediately ordered his assistant, Mr.
Markham, to place the Rajah under arrest. The audacity
of the step was so great as to suggest either that Has-
tings was acting with the recklessness of despair, or had
formed no thought as to the not merely possible but prob-
able result of his action. The Rajah accepted the confine-
ment to his palace with a dignified protest. Two com-
panies of sepoys w^ere placed to guard him. These sepoys
had no ammunition; they were surrounded by swarms of
the Rajah's soldiery raging at the insult offered to their
lord. The Rajah's men fell upon the sepoys and cut them

270 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ltiil

find thoir English officers to pieces. The Eajah lowered
himself to the river by a rope of turbans, crossed the
Ganges, and shut himself up in his stronghold of Ram-
nagar. Hastings's life was in imminent peril. Had he
remained where he was he and his thirty Englishmen and
his twenty sepoys would have been massacred. He fled
in the darkness of the night to the fortress of Chunar,
about thirty miles from Benares, where there was a small
garrison of the Company's troops.

However rash Hastings might have been in provoking
the conflict with the Eajah, once it was provoked he carried
himself with admirable courage and coolness. Shut up
with a small force in a region blazing with armed rebellion,
menaced by an army of forty thousand men, he acted with
as much composure and ability as if he were the unques-
tioned master of the situation. He declined all offers of
assistance from the Vizier of Oude, rejected all Chait
Singh's overtures for peace, and issued his orders to the
forces that were gradually rallying around him with rare
tact and judgment. In a very short time the wdiole aspect
of affairs changed. The Company's forces under Major
Popham defeated the Rajah's troops, captured fort after
fort, drove the Rajah to take refuge in Bundelcund, and
brought the city and district of Benares under British rule
again. Hastings immediately declared that the fugitive
Rajah's estates were forfeited, and he bestowed them upon
the Rajah's nephew upon tributary terms which bound him
faster to the Company, and exacted double the revenue for-
merly payable into the Company's exchequer.

But the money which Hastings so urgently needed, the
money for which he had struck his bold stroke at Benares,
was still lacking. All the booty gained in the reduction
of Benares had been divided among the victors; none of
it had found its way into the Company's coffers. The
Vizier of Oude was deeply in the Company's debt, but the
Vizier of Oude was in desperately straitened circumstances,
and could not pay his debt. Knowing Hastings's need, the
Vizier exposed to him certain plans he had formed for
raising money by seizing upon the estates of the two

1781. THE VIZIER OF OUDE AND THE BEGUMS. 271

Begums, his mother, the widow of the late Nawab, and his
grandmother, the late Nawab's mother. The Vizier may
have had just claims enough upon the Begums, but it was
peculiarly rash and unjustifiable of Hastings to make
himself a party to the Vizier's interests. Hastings, un-
happily for himself, lent the Vizier the aid of the Com-
pany's troops. The Begums, who were quite prepared to
resist their feeble-spirited relation, did not go so far as to
oppose the Company in arms. Their palace was occupied,
their treasure seized, their servants imprisoned, and they
themselves suffered discomforts and slights of a kind
which constituted very real indignities and insults in the
eyes of Mohammedan women. This was practically the
last, as it was the most foolish, act of Hastings's rule. It
had the misfortune for him of stirring the indignant soul
of Burke.

272 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. ux.

gi^

CHx\PTER LIX.

THE GREAT IMPEACHMENT.

Burke's spacious mind was informed by a passion for
justice. He was not cast in the mould of men who make
concessions to their virtues or compacts with their virtues.
He could not for a moment admit that the aggrandizement
of the empire should be gained by a single act of injustice,
and in his eyes AYarren Hastings's career was stained by
a long succession of acts of injustice. He certainly would
not do evil that good might come of it. If the Rohilla
war was a crime, if the execution of Nand Kumar was an
infamy, if the deposition of Chait Singh and the plun-
dering of the Begums were crimes, then no possible advan-
tage that these acts might cause to the temporal greatness
of the State could weigh for one moment in the balance
with Burke. In the high court of Burke^s mind Warren
Hastings was a doomed, a degraded man, even though it
could have been proved, as indeed it would have been hard
to prove, that any ill deeds which Warren Hastings had
done were essential to the maintenance of English rule
and English glory in India. Burke argued that English
rule in India, English glory in India, did not gain but only
lost by ill deeds. But if England's gain and England's
glory in India depended upon such deeds, he for his part
\\ould have refused the gain and shuddered at the glory.

If Burke's all-conquering passion was a passion for jus-
tice, perhaps his keenest political taste was for India and
the affairs of India. At a time when our Indian Empire
was merely in its dawn, at a time when the affairs of India
were looked upon by the nation at large as the commercial
matters of a company, Burke allowed all the resources of
his great mind to be employed in the study of India. He

1785. BURKE'S KNOWLEDGE OF INDIA. 273

knew India — he who had never sailed its seas or touched
its shores — as probably no other Englishmen of his time
knew India, not even those whose lives had been for the
most part passed in the country. And this comprehensive
knowledge Burke was able to impart again with a readi-
ness that was never unreliable, with a copiousness that was
never redundant. He gave a fascination to the figures of
Indian finance; he made the facts of contemporary Indian
history live with all the charm of the most famous events
of Greek or Roman history. India in his hands became
what it rightly is, but what few had thought it till then,
one of the most fascinating of human studies. Indian
affairs on his lips allied all the allurement of a romance
with all the statistical accuracy of a Parliamentary report.
Such a genius for the presentation of facts inspired by
such a passion for justice has enriched English literature
with some of its noblest and most truthful pages.

The pith of all Burke's Indian policy, the text upon
which all his splendid sermons of Indian administration
were preached, is to be found in one single sentence of the
famous speech on the ^abob of Arcot's debts. In that
single sentence the whole of Burke's theory of government
is summed up with the directness of an epigram and with
the authority of a law. " Fraud, injustice, oppression,
peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of the same
blood, family, and caste, with those that are born and
bred in England." Outside the noble simplicity of that
ethical doctrine Burke could not and would not budge.
That sentence represents the whole difference between him
and the man whom he afterwards accused, between him
and the men of whom that man came to be the representa-
tive. Burke's morality was direct, uncompromising, un-
alterable by climatic conditions or by the supple moralities
of other races. The morality of Warren Hastings and of
those who thought with and acted for Warren Hastings
v.^as the morality of Clive beforehand, was the morality
that had been professed and practised time and again since
the days of Clive and Hastings by the inheritors of their
policy in India, The ingenious theory was set up that in

274 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lix.

dealing with Oriental races it was essential for the Eng-
lishman to employ Oriental means of carrying his point.
If an Oriental would lie and cheat and forge and, if needs
were, murder, why then the Englishman dealing with him
must lie and cheat and forge and murder too, in order to
gain the day. Things that he would not dare to do, things
that, to do him justice, he would not dream of doing in
England, were not merely permissible but justifiable, not
merely justifiable but essential in his intercourse with
Asiatic princes and peoples, with dexterous Mohammedan
and dexterous Hindoo. The policy was inevitably new in
Burke's time; it has been upheld again and again since
Burke's time. The theory which allowed Clive to forge
and Warren Hastings to plunder was the same principle
which led English soldiers three generations later to make
Brahmins wipe up blood before being killed, which prompt-
ed them to blow their prisoners from the cannon's mouth
io the hope that their victims should believe that their
souls as well as their bodies were about to perish, which
instigated gallant men to suggest in all seriousness the
advisability of flaying alive their captured mutineers. The
influence of the East is not always a wholesome influence
upon the w^anderer from the West. It is displayed at its
worst when it leads great men, as Clive and Hastings un-
doubtedly were great men, into the perpetration of evil
actions, and the justification of them on the principle that
in dealing with an Oriental the Englishman's morality
undergoes a change, and becomes for the time and the hour
an Oriental morality.

Against such an adversary, Hastings, ignorant of the
conditions of English political life, could bring forward
no better champion than Major Scott. Hastings opposed
to the greatest orator and most widely informed man of his
age, a man of meagre parts, who only succeeded in weary-
ing profoundly the House of Commons and every other
audience to which he appealed. Such a proconsul as War-
ren Hastings standing his trial upon such momentous
charges needed all the ability, all the art that an advocate
can possess to be employed in his behalf. Had Hastings

1785-8Y. THE DEFENDER OF HASTINGS. 275

been so lucky as to find a defender endowed, not indeed
with the genius or the knowledge of Burke, for there was
no such man to be found, but with something of the genius,
something of the knowledge of Burke, his case might have
appeared very different then and in the eyes of posterity.
If Scott could have pleaded for Hastings eloquently, brill-
iantly, with something of the rich coloring, something of
the fervid enthusiasm that was characteristic of the utter-
ances of his great antagonist, he might have done much
to stem, if not to turn the stream of public thought. But
Warren Hastings was not graced so far. His sins had in-
deed found him out when he was cursed with such an
enemy and cursed with such a friend.

It is clear that Hastings himself on his return had little
idea of the serious danger with which he was menaced. He
seems to have become convinced that his services to the
State must inevitably outweigh any accidents or errors in
the execution of those services. He honestly believed him-
self to have been a valuable and estimable servant of his
country and his Crown. We may very w^ell take his re-
peated declarations of his own integrity and uprightness,
not, indeed, as proof of his possession of those qualities,
but as proof of his profound belief that he did possess
them. When he landed in England he appears to have
expected only honors, only acclamation, admiration, and
applause. He returned to accept a triumph; he did not
dream that he should have to face a trial.

The long years in India had served to confuse his per-
ception of the conduct of affairs at home. He did not in
the least appreciate the men with whom he had to deal.
If he gauged pretty closely the malignity of Francis, he
may have fancied that the malignity was not very likely
to prove dangerous. But he wholly misunderstood the
character of the other foes, as important as Francis was
unimportant, who were ranged against him. He made the
extraordinary mistake of despising Burke.

Hastings had certain anxieties on his return to England.
His first was caused by his disappointment at not finding
his wife in London to greet him on his arrival, a disap-

276 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lix.

pointnicnt that was consoled two days later when, as ho
was journeying post-haste to the country to join her, he
met her on Maidenhead Bridge driving in to join him. His
second was the pleasurable anxiety of negotiating for the
jHirchase of Daylesford, the realization of his youthful
dream. He was made a little anxious too, later on, by the
delay in the awarding to him of those honors which he so
confidently expected. But he does not seem to have been
disturbed in any appreciable degree by the formidable
preparations which were being made against him by Burke
and Fox and the followers of Burke and Fox.

It is just possible that those preparations might have
come to little or nothing but for the folly of Major Scott.
Major Scott was mad enough to try and force the hand
of the enemies of Hastings by calling upon Burke and Fox
to fix a day for the charges that they were understood to
be prepared to bring against him. Fox immediately rose
to assure Major Scott that the matter was not forgotten.
Burke, with grave composure, added that a general did not
take choice of time and place of battle from his adversaries.
It has been suggested that but for Major Scott's ill-advised
zeal the attack might never have come to a head. But the
conclusion is one which it would be rash to draw. Burke
was not the man to forego his long-cherished hope of bring-
ing a criminal to justice. If he had been inclined to forego
it, he w^as not the kind of man to be goaded into unwilling
resumption of his purpose by the taunts of Major Scott.
It may surely be assumed that the impeachment of Warren
Hastings would have been made even if Major Scott had
been as wise and discreet as he proved himself to be unwise
and indiscreet.

Even when the attack was formally begun, Hastings
failed to grasp its gravity or guess the best mode of meeting
it. He insisted upon being heard at the Bar of the House
in his own defence. A man of rare oratorical abilit}^
gifted with special skill in the selection of his material
and the adjustment of his arguments, might have done
himself a good turn by such a decision. But Hastings was
not so endowed, and he w^ould have done far better in

1787. PITT AND THE IMPEACHMENT. 277

following the example of Clive and of Rumbold. He com-
mitted the one fault which the House of Commons never
forgives, he wearied it. Such dramatic effect as he might
have got out of his position as a proconsul arraigned be-
fore a senate he spoiled by the length and tedium of his
harangue. He took two days to read a long and wordy de-
fence, two days which he considered all too short, and
which the House of Commons found all too long. It
yawned while Hastings prosed. Accustomed to an average
of eloquence of which the art has long been lost, it found
Hastings's paper insufferably wearisome.

Although he was the target for the eloquence of Burke,
of Fox, and of Sheridan, still Hastings's hopes were high,
and they mounted higher when the Eohilla war charge was
rejected by a large majority. But they were only raised
so high to be dashed to earth again in the most unexpected
manner. The friends of Hastings were convinced that he
would have the unfailing support of Pitt in his defence.
He was now to learn that he was mistaken.

Hastings had one very zealous champion in the House
of Commons. This was a young member, Sir James
Bland-Burges. He rose not merely with the approval of
Pitt, but actually at Pitt's instigation, to defend Warren
Hastings on the question of the treatment of the Rajah
of Benares. It is scarcely surprising that the House did
not pay him any great attention. Having just come under
" the spell of the enchanter," it would hardly have listened
with attention to an old and well-known member, and
Bland-Burges was a young and unknown man. He could
not command a hearing, so, whispering to Pitt that he
would leave the remainder of the defence to him, he sat
do^vn, and the debate, on Pitt's suggestion, was adjourned.

On the following day the young defender came to the
House hot to hear Pitt deliver to an attentive senate that
defence which he had striven unsuccessfully to make. He
has recorded the astonishment, indignation, and despair
when Pitt rose to make his declaration concerning the
charge against Hastings. The minister in whom Hastings
trusted to find an allv offered some cold condemnation of

278 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lix.

tlie intemperance of the attack, proffered some lukewarm
praise to Hastings, and then announced that he would
agree to the motion. To most of Pitt's supporters Pitf s
action came as an unpleasant surprise; but to Bland-
Burges, from his previous conversation with the minister,
it seemed like an act of treason. There was little for
Bland-Burges to do, but it is to his credit that he did that
little. It required no small courage for a follower and a
friend of Pitt to defy his authority in the House. Yet
that is practically what Bland-Burges did. Paging with
indignation at what he conceived to be the tergiversation
of his leader and the treachery to his hero, Bland-Burges
once again forced himself upon the attention of the House.
The leaders on both sides being agreed, it was expected that
the matter would be settled out of hand, and the Speaker
had actually put the question and declared it carried when
Bland-Burges leaped to his feet and challenged a division.
He acted with the courage of his despair, but, as he says,
few unpremeditated enterprises ever succeeded better than
this one. " The question indeed was carried by a great
majority, but those who were against it were almost en-
tirely of those who till then had implicitly voted with the
minister. This was not only mortifying to Mr. Pitt, but
highly encouraging to Mr. Hastings and his steadfast
friends."

Bland-Burges did not escape an early intimation of the
disapproval of his chief. When the House broke up, Pitt
said to him, with an austere look, " So, sir, you have
thought proper to divide the House. I hope you are satis-
fied.'' Bland-Burges answered that he was perfectly satis-
fied. " Then you seem satisfied very easily," the minister
retorted ; to which Bland-Burges replied, " Not exactly
so, sir. I am satisfied with nothing that has passed this
evening except the discovery I have made that there were
still honest men present." "On that," Bland-Burges
continues, " with a stern look and a stately air he left
me."

Bland-Burges won a reward for his courage which out-
weighed the disapproval of Pitt. When he had thus vol-

1787. BLAND-BURGES AND HASTINGS. 279

"unteered on behalf of AVarren Hastings he was so entirely
a stranger to him that he did not even know him by sight.
Xaturally enough, however, the arraigned man was de-
sirous to become acquainted with the stranger who had
stood by him when his own friends had abandoned him.
He lost no time, therefore, in calling upon Bland-Burges
to thank him for the part he had played. Bland-Burges
says that the conversation was deeply interesting, but that
he only made a note of one passage, in which he explained
that, independently of his own conviction that the cause
of Warren Hastings was just and honorable, he had been
moved to take part in his defence by the positive instruc-
tions of his father, who had died about two 3^ears pre-
viously. Bland-Burges's father, attributing the preserva-
tion of England^s power in India to Hastings, had enjoined
his son, if ever an attack were made upon Hastings, to
abstract himself from all personal and party considerations
and to support him liberally and manfully. Whatever we
may think of the conduct of Warren Hastings, it is a
pleasure to find that those who thought him to be in the
right stood up for their belief as honorably and as gal-
lantly as Bland-Burges. It is not surprising that Warren
Hastings was moved to tears. That day's interview was
the beginning of a friendship that endured unbroken until
the death of Warren Hastings.

The reason which Pitt gave for his action on the
Benares vote was simple enough. He said that, although
the action of Hastings towards the Eajah was in itself
justifiable, yet that the manner of the action was not
justifiable. Chait Singh deserved to be fined, but not to
be fined in an exorbitant and tyrannical manner. The ex-
planation might very well be considered sufficient. A
high-minded minister might feel bound to condemn the
conduct of an official whom he admired, if that conduct
had pushed a legal right to an illegal length. But Pitt's
decision came with such a shock to the friends, and even
to the enemies of Hastings, that public rumor immediate-
ly set to work to find some other less simple and less honest
reason for Pitt's action. One rumor ascribed it to an in-

280 A IlISTOKY OF THE POUR GEORGES. ch. lix.

ierview with Dundas, in which Dundas had succeeded,
after hours of argument, in inducing Pitt to throw War-
ren Hastings over. Another suggested that Pitt was
spurred by anger at a declaration of Thurlow's that he
and the King between them would make Hastings a peer,
whether the minister would or no. A third suggested that
Pitt was jealous of the ro3^al favor to Mr. and Mrs. Has-
tings; while a fourth asserted that Pitt deliberately sacri-
ficed Hastings in order to afford the Opposition other
quarry than himself. But there is no need to seek for
any other motive than the motive which Pitt alleged. It
was quite sufficient to compel an honorable man to give
the vote that Pitt gave.

Blow after blow fell upon Hastings. The terrible at-
tacks of Burke were for a time eclipsed by the dazzling
brilliancy of Sheridan's attack upon him in the famous
Begum speech. Those who heard that speech speak of it
with reverence and with passion as one of the masterpieces
of the world. In the form in which it is preserved, or
rather in which it has failed to be preserved for us, it
is hard, if not impossible, to find merit calling for the
rapture which it aroused in the minds of men familiar
with magnificent oratory, and perfectly competent to
judge. That it did arouse rapture is beyond doubt, and
for the moment it was even more effective in injuring
Hastings than the more profound but less flaming utter-
ances of Burke. The testimony of Fox, the testimony of
B3Ton, alike are offered in its unqualified praise.

It was decided by the House of Commons, with the con-
sent of Pitt, that Hastings should be impeached. One in-
dignity Pitt spared him, one danger Pitt saved him from.
Burke was, somewhat incomprehensibly, anxious that the
name of Francis should be placed upon that Committee of
Impeachment to which Burke had already been nominated
as the first member by Pitt. But here Pitt was resolute.
Francis was flagrantly hostile to Hastings, hostile with a
personal as well as a public hatred, and Pitt could not
tolerate the notion that he should find a place upon the
Committee of Impeachment. Burke protested, and the

1787. THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL. 281

very protest was characteristic of Burke's high-mindedness.
For to Burke the whole business was a purely public busi-
ness, in no sense connected with any private feelings, and
it seemed to him as if the exclusion of any one of those
who had been conspicuous in the arraignment of Hastings
from a responsible place on the Committee of Impeach-
ment on the ground of personal feeling was to cast some-
thing like a slur upon the purity of motive of the men
engaged in the attack. But Pitt was in the right, and the
name of Francis was, by a large majorit}^, not suffered to
appear upon the committee.

In the May of 1787 Burke formally impeached Warren
Hastings at the Bar of the House of Lords. Hastings was
immediately taken into custody by the Sergeant-at-Arms,
and was held to bail for £20,000, with two sureties for
£10,000 each. The delay which was to be characteristic
of the whole proceedings was evident from the first.
Though Hastings was taken into custody in the May of

1787, it was not until February 13 of the following year,

1788, that the impeached man was brought to his trial in
Vv'estminster Hall.

Before the trial began, popular feeling was roused
against Hastings more keenly by the action of the Court
than by the action of Burke and of his colleagues. The
Court was inclined to be even more than friendly to Has-
tings and to his wife, and both Hastings and his wife, who
were not in touch with English public opinion, took the
unwise course of making the very most of the royal favor,
and of displaying themselves as much as possible in the
royal sunlight. The London public, always jealous of any
Court favoritism, resented the patronage of Hastings, and
while it was in this temper an event took place which
served to heighten its resentment. The Nizam of the
Deccan had sent a very magnificent diamond to the King
as a present, and, being ignorant of what was going on in
England, he chose Hastings, naturally enough, as the
medium through which to convey his diamond to the King.
Hastings, with the want of judgment which characterized
him at this time, accepted a duty which, delicate at any

282 A lllSTUliY OF TUE FOLK GEORGES. ch.lix.

time, became under the conditions positively dangerous.
He was present at the Levee at which the diamond was
presented to the King. Immediately rumor seized upon
the incident and distorted it. It was confidently asserted
tliat Hastings was bribing the Sovereign with vast presents
of precious stones to use his influence in his behalf. The
solitary diamond became in the popular eye more numerous
than the stones that Sinbad came upon in the enchanted
valley. The print-shops teemed with caricatures, all giv-
ing some highly colored exaggeration of the prevailing im-
pression. Every possible pictorial device which could sug-
gest to the passer-by that Hastings was buying the pro-
tection of the King by fabulous gifts of diamonds was
made public. In one Hastings was shown flinging quan-
tities of precious stones into the open mouth of the King.
In another he was represented as having bought the King
bodily, crown and sceptre and all, with his precious
stones, and as carrying him away in a wheelbarrow. So
high did popular feeling run that the great diamond be-
came the hero of a discussion in the House of Commons,
when Major Scott was obliged to make a statement in his
chief's behalf giving an accurate account of what had
really occurred.

The trial of Warren Hastings is one of the most re-
markable examples of contrasts in human affairs that is
to be found in the whole course of our history. It began
under conditions of what may fairly be called national in-
terest. It came to an end amid the apathy and indifference
of the public. When it began, the Great Hall of West-
minster was scarcely large enough to contain all those
who longed to be present at the trial of the great proconsul.
All the rank, the wealth, the genius, the wit, the beauty of
England seemed to be gathered together in the building,
which is said to be the oldest inhabited building in the
world. When it ended, and long before it had ended, the
attendance liad dwindled down to a mere handful of spec-
tators, some two or three score of persons whose patience,
whose interest, or whose curiosity had survived the in-
difference with w^hich the rest of the world had come to

1788-95. HASTINGS'S ORIENTAL FORTITUDE. 283

regard the whole business. The spirit of genius and the
spirit of dulness met in close encounter in that memorable
arena, and it must be admitted that the spirit of dulness
did on the whole prevail. There seemed a time when it
was likely that the trial might go on forever. Men and
women who came to the first hearing eager on the one side
or the other, impassioned for Hastings or enthusiastic for
Burke, died and were buried, and new men and women
occupied themselves with other things, and still the trial
dragged its slow length along.

It may be unhesitatingly admitted that during the long
course of the trial Warren Hastings bore himself with
courage and with dignity. He was firmly convinced that
he was a much-injured man, and if the justice of a man's
cause were to be decided merely upon the demeanor of the
defendant, Hastings would have been exonerated. He pro-
fessed to be horrified, and he no doubt was horrified, by
what he called " the atrocious calumnies of Mr. Burke and
Mr. Fox." He carried himself as if they were indeed
atrocious calumnies without any basis whatsoever. His
attitude was that of the martyr supported by the serenity
of the saint. He had lived so long in the East that he
gained not a little of that Eastern fortitude which is the
fortitude of fatalism. While the trial was progressing he
told a dear friend that he found much consolation in a
certain Oriental tale. The story was of an Indian king
whose temper never knew a medium, and w^ho in pros-
perity was hurried into extravagance by his joy, while in
adversity grief overwhelmed him with despondency. Hav-
ing suffered many inconveniences through this weakness,
he besought his courtiers to devise a sentence, short enough
to be engraved upon a ring, which should suggest a remedy
for his evil. Many phrases w^ere proposed; none were
found acceptable until his daughter offered him an
emerald on which were graven two Arabic words, the lit-
eral translation of which is, " This, too, will pass." The
King em.braced his daughter and declared that she was
wiser than all his wise men. " ]^ow," said Hastings,
•' when I appear at the Bar and hear the violent invectives

284 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lix.

of my enemies, I arm myself with patience. I reflect upon
the mutability of human life, and I say to myself, ^ This,
too, will pass/ "

It did pass, but it took its long time to pass. The trial
lasted seven years. Begun in the February of 1788, it
ended in the April of 1795. In that long space of time
men might well be excused if they had grown weary of it.
Had its protracted course been even pursued in colorless,
eventless times it would have been hard to preserve the
public interest in the trial so terribly drawn out. But it
was one of the curious fortunes of the trial to embrace
within its compass some of the most thrilling and momen-
tous years that have been recorded in the history of man-
kind. In the year after the trial began the Bastille fell.
In the year before the trial closed the Reign of Terror
came to an end with the deaths of Eobespierre and St.
Just. The interval had seen the whole progress of the
French Revolution, had applauded the constitutional strug-
gle for liberty, had shuddered at the September massacres,
had seen the disciplined armies of the great European
Powers reel back dismayed before the ragged regiments
of the Republic, had seen France answer Europe with the
head of a king, with the head of a queen, had observed
how the Revolution, like Saturn, devoured its own chil-
dren, had witnessed with fear as well as with fury the
apotheosis of the guillotine. While the events in France
were shaking every European State, including England,
to its centre, it was hard for the public mind to keep itself
fixed with any degree of intentness upon the trial of
Warren Hastings.

The events of that interval had affected too, profoundly,
the chief actor in the trial. Burke entered upon the im-
peachment of Warren Hastings at the zenith of his great
career, at the moment of his greatest glory. The rise and
progress of the French evolution exercised a profound, even
a disastrous, efl'ect upon him. For once his fine intellect
failed to discriminate between the essentials and the non-
essentials of a great question. His horror at the atrocities
of the Revolution blinded him to all the advantages that

1788-95. ACQUITTAL OF HASTINGS. 285

the success of the Revolution brought with it. The whole
framework of that great event was to him so hideously
stained with the blood of the Queen, with the blood of so
many innocent persons, that he could see nothing but the
blood, and the influence of this is to be noticed in Burke's
final speech with its almost confident expectation that
the guillotine would sooner or later be established in Eng-
land. Burke's frenzy against the French Revolution made
it appear to many as if his reasoned and careful indict-
ment of the erring Governor-General might after all be
only mere frenzy too.

Such as it was, and under such conditions, the trial did
come to an end at last, after such alternations of brilliant
speeches and dull speeches as the world had never wit-
nessed before. Sheridan again added to his fame by a
speech of which, unhappily, we are able to form no very
clear idea. Law defended Hastings in detailing the whole
of the history of Hindostan. Hastings again and again
appealed piteously and pathetically that the trial might be
brought somehow or other to an end. He was growing
old, he had been for years a nominal prisoner, he was very
anxious that the terrible strain of waiting upon the slow
proceedings of the tribunal should be relieved. At last
the end came after weary years of controversy, in which
Hastings had been loaded with more contumely and lauded
with more extravagance than it were possible to conceive
liim good enough or bad enough to deserve. Finally, in
the April of 1795, Warren Hastings was acquitted by a
large majority on every one of the sixteen counts against
him that were put to the vote. Burke could not conceal his
chagrin at this unexpected result. He had expected, he
declared afterwards, that the corruption of the age would
enable Hastings to escape on some of the counts, but he
was not prepared for the total acquittal. It is probable
that Hastings himself was not prepared for it, but the re-
lief it afforded him was tempered by the grave financial
ditficulties into which he found himself plunged. The
conduct of that long defence had well-nigh exhausted all
his available resources. After a vain appeal to Pitt to

28G A HISTORY OF THE FOUR CEORGES. ch. ux.

indemnify him for his legal expenses, an arrangement was
come to between the Government and the Company by
which Hastings was enabled to live at first in straitened,
afterwards in moderate, circumstances for the rest of his
life.

It can scarcely be questioned but that Burke was in some
degree responsible for the result of the trial. His burning
sense of injustice, his passionate righteousness, and the
perfervid strength of his convictions betrayed him into
an intemperance of language that inevitably caused a re-
action of sympathy in favor of the man so violently as-
sailed. It is impossible to read without regret the actual
ferocity of the epithets that Burke hurled against Warren
Hastings. In this he was followed, even exceeded, by
Sheridan; but the utterances of Sheridan, while they en-
raptured their hearers by their brilliancy, did not carry
with them the weight that attached to the utterances of
Burke. Burke's case was too strong to need an over-
charged form of expression. The plain statement of the
misdeeds of Warren Hastings was far more telling as an
indictment thnn the abuse with which Burke unhappily
was tempted to overload his case. Those who were amazed
and sickened, with Macaulay, to think that in that age
any one could be found capable of calling the greatest of
living public men, *' that reptile Mr. Burke,'' must reluc-
tantly be compelled to admit that Burke set his enemies a
bad example by his own unlicensed use of opprobrium. In
justifying, for instance, the application to Warren Has-
tings of Coke's savage description of Raleigh as a " spider
of hell," Burke allowed his fierce indignation to get the
better of his tongue, to the detriment of his own object,
the bringing of an offender to justice. Miss Burney in her
memoirs affords a remarkable instance of the injury which
Burke did to his own object by the exuberance of his anger.
She tells us how, as she listened to Burke's arraignment
of Hastings, and went over the catalogue of his offences,
she felt her sympathy for Hastings slowly disappear, but
that as Burke increased in the furv of his assault, and
passed from accusation to invective, the convincing effect

1788-95. EFFECT OF THE IMPEACHMEXT TRIAL. 287

of his oratory withered, and the effect which he had so care-
fully created he himself contrived to destroy.

In spite of defects which in some degree brought their
own punishment with them, Burke's speeches against War-
ren Hastings must ever remain among the highest ex-
amples of human eloquence employed in the service of the
right. The gifts of the statesman, the philosopher, the
orator, the great man of letters, are all allied in those
marvellous pages which first taught Englishmen how
closely their national honor as well as their national pros-
perity was involved in the administration of justice in
India. If Burke failed to convict Warren Hastings, he
succeeded in convicting the system which made such mis-
demeanors as Warren Hastings's possible. We owe to
Burke a new India. What had been but the appanage of
a corrupt and corrupting Company he practically made
forever a part of the glory and the grandeur of the British
Empire.

Abuse and invective were not confined to Burke nor to
the side which Burke represented. Warren Hastings, or
those who acted for Warren Hastings, employed every
means in their power to blacken the characters of their
opponents and to hold them up to public ridicule and to
public detestation. The times were not gentle times for
men engaged in political warfare, and the companions of
Hastings employed all the arts that the times placed at
their disposal. Burke and Sheridan, and those who acted
with Burke and Sheridan, were savage enough in the trib-
une, but they did not employ the extra-tribunal methods
by which their enemy retaliated upon them.

Hastings is scarcely to be blamed, considering duly the
temper of his age, for doing everything that party warfare
permitted against his opponents. He was fighting as for
his life; he was fighting for what was far dearer to him
than life — for life, indeed, he had ever shown a most
soldierly disregard ; he was fighting for an honorable name,
for the reward of a lifetime devoted to the interests of his
countrv, as he understood those interests; he was fighting
for fame as against infamy, and he fought hard and he

288 A niSTORV OF THK FOUR GEORGES. ch. lix.

fought after the fashion of tlie time in which he lived.
The newspaper, the pamphlet, the lampoon, the carricature.
the acidulated satire, the envenomed epigram, all were
used, and used with success, against the promoters of the
impeachment.

The caricatures were not all on one side, but the most
numerous and the most effective were in favor of the im-
peached statesman. If the adversaries of Hastings natu-
rally seized upon the opportunity of a classical effect by
presenting Burke and Hastings in the character of Cicero
and Verres, the friends of Verres replied by the pencil of
Gillray, representing Hastings as the savior of India de-
fending himself heroically against assassins with the faces
of Burke and of Fox. As the interest in the trial flagged
the caricatures grew fewer and fewer, to revive a little at
the close of the case. The popular view of the trial was
then represented fairly enough by a large print called
" The Last Scene of the ^Tanager's Farce," in which Has-
tings w^as represented as rising in glory from the clouds of
calumny, while Burke and Fox are represented witnessing
with despair the failure of their protracted farce, and the
crafty face of Philip Francis peeped from behind a scene
where he was supposed to be playing the part of the
prompter — " no character in the farce, but very useful
behind the scenes," a description which sums up smartly
enough the part that Philip Francis played in the whole
transaction from first to last.

The eve of Hastings's life was as peaceful as its noon
and day had been stormy. The proconsul became a coun-
try squire; the ruler of an empire, the autocrat of kings,
soothed his old age very much after the fashion of Dio-
cletian and of Candide, in the planting of cabbages. For
three-and-twenty years he dwelt at Daylesford, happy in
his wife, happy in his friends, happy in his health, in his
rustic tastes, in his simple pleasures, in his tranquil occu-
pation. He and his wife often visited London, but Has-
tings seems to have been always happiest in the country,
and he gradually declined into extreme old age with all
the grace and dignity of a Roman gentleman, loved by his

1818. DEATH OF HASTINGS. 289

friends, dearl}^ loved by those who were young. Once in
those long quiet years, after the death of Pitt, Hastings,
to please his wife, pleaded for public reparation of the
wrong which he believed had been done him. Grenville
professed every willingness to grant him a peerage, but
refused to entertain the idea of inducing the Commons to
reverse their former judgment. On those terms Hastings
declined the peerage. The nearest approach to anything
like public consolation for his sorrows came to him in 1813,
when, at the age of eighty, he came once more to the Bar
of the House of Commons, this time to give evidence on the
question of renewing the Charter of the East India Com-
pany. By both Houses, Commons and Lords alike, the
old man was greeted with the greatest enthusiasm, saluted
with rapturous applause on his arrival, with reverential
salutations on his departure. In 1818 the health which
he had preserved so well till then broke, and he died after
some severe suffering on August 22 in that year, and was
laid in the earth that he had alw^ays loved so well.

One of the latest acts of his life was to appeal to the
Court of Directors to make some provision for his wife,
by extending to her the annuity that had been accorded to
him. They gave, says his most devoted biographer, no
more heed to his dying entreaties than they would have
given to the whine of a self -convicted beggar. Yet surely
Hastings had deserved well of the East India Company.
His faults had been committed in their service and had
given them, not himself, wealth and power. But England
is not always grateful to her servants. It is not wonder-
ful, says Sir Alfred Lyall, that Hastings's application
failed entirely, " remembering that even Lord Xelson's
last testamentary appeal on behalf of a woman — ^ the
only favor I ask of my King and my country at the mo-
ment when I am going to fight their battle ' — had been
rejected and utterly disregarded." Mrs. Hastings sur-
vived her husband for some years, and was over ninety
years of age w^hen she died.

VOL. III. — 10

290 A UISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. cu. lx.

riTAPTEE LX.

THE CHANGE OF THINGS.

The establishment of the American republic meant
something more for England than the loss of her fairest
colonies, and meant much more for Europe than the estab-
lishment of a new form of government in the New World.
While the United States were acclaiming Washington as
their first President and rejoicing over the excellence of
their carefully framed Constitution, the principles which
had elected the one and had created the other were work-
ing elsewhere to unexpected and mighty issues. French
gentlemen of rank and fortune, fired by a philosophic
admiration for lilierty, had fought and fought well for the
American colonists, ^\'hen the revolt had become a revolu-
tion, and the revolution a triumph, the French gentlemen
went back to France with their hearts full of love and
their lips loud in praise for the young republic and its
simple, splendid citizens. The doctrines of liberty and
equality, which had been so dear to the Philosophers and
the Encyclopedists, were now being practically applied
across the Atlantic, and the growth of their success was
watched by the eager e3^es of the wisest and the unwisest
thinkers in France. Within five years from the time when
the American army was disbanded French political philos-
ophy found itself making astonishing strides towards the
realization of its cherished ideals. It had long felt the
need of some change in the system of government that had
prevailed in France, but its desires had seemed dim as
dreams until the success of a handful of rebellious colo-
nists in a distant country had made the spirit of democ-
racy an immediate force in the life and the thought of
the world. Undoubtedlv the condition of France was bad.

1789. THE POLITICAL CONDITION OP FRANCE. 291

The feudal system, or what was left of the feudal system,
worn out, degraded, and corrupt, was rapidly reducing
France to financial, physical, and political ruin. It is no
part of the business of this history to dwell upon the con-
ditions prevailing in France towards the close of the
eighteenth century, conditions which prevailed in varying
degree over the most part of Europe. Great French finan-
ciers like Turgot, great French thinkers like Voltaire and
Rousseau and the company of the " Encyclopaedia," had
been keenly conscious of the corroding evils in the whole
system of French political and social life, and had labored
directly and indirectly to diminish them. Keen-eyed ob-
servers from abroad, men of the world like Chesterfield,
philosophers like xVrthur Young, had at different epochs
observed the s3'mptoms of social disease and prognosticated
the nature of its progress. The France of that day has
been likened to a pyramid with the sovereign for its apex,
with the nobility, a remnant of antique feudalism, for its
next tier, with the wealthv and influential Church for the
next, and below these the vast unrecognized bulk of the
pyramid, the unprivileged masses who were the people of
France. In the hands of the few who had the happiness
to be " born," or who otherwise belonged to the privileged
orders, lay all the power, all the authority which for the
most part they misused or abused. It has been said with
truth that the man who did not belong to the privileged
orders had scarcely any more influence upon the laws
which bound him and which ground him than if he lived
in Mars or Saturn instead of in Picardy or Franche Comte.
Such a system of government, which could only have been
found tolerable if it had been swaved bv a brotherhood of
saints and sages, was, as a matter of fact, worked in the
worst manner possible and for the worst purposes. The
conditions under which the vast mass of the French people
lived, struggled, suffered, and died were so cruel that it is
hard indeed to believe them compatible with the high de-
gree of civilization which, in other respects, France had
reached. A merciless and most comprehensive process of
taxation squeezed life and hope out of the French nation

292 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. cH. lx.

for the benefit of a nobility whose corruption was onl}'
rival lod by its worthlessness and an ecclesiasticism that
had forgotten the Sermon on the Mount and the way to
Calvary.

But if the condition of France was bad it contained the
germs of improvement. A greater freedom of thought, a
greater freedom of speech were beginning, very gradu-
ally, to assert themselves and to make their influence felt.
Philosophical speculation on sorrow and suffering turned
the minds of men to thoughts of how that sorrow might
be stanched and that suffering abated. The slowly ris-
ing tide of thought was blown into an angry sea by a wind
from the west, and in a little while a scarcely suspected
storm became a hurricane that swept into a common ruin
everything that opposed its fury. England had long been
looked up to by French reformers as the pattern for the
changes they desired to see brought about in their own
countr}^ The moderation and equality of its laws, as com-
pared with those of France, the facilities of utterance af-
forded to the popular voice, made it seem a veritable
Utopia to eyes dimmed by the mist of French feudality.
But now another and a greater England had arisen in the
New World. Across the Atlantic the descendants of the
men who had overthrown a dynasty and beheaded a king
had shaken themselves free from forms of oppression that
seemed mild indeed to Frenchmen, and had proclaimed
themselves the champions of theories of social liberty and
political freedom which had been dreamed of by French
philosophers but had never yet been put into practice. Re-
bellious America had fired the enthusiasm of gallant
French adventurers; successful, independent America ani-
mated the hopes and spurred the imaginations of those
whose eyes turned in longing admiration from the season-
ed constitution of monarchical England to the as yet green
constitution of republican America.

Those Englishmen whose tastes and sympathies induced
them to keep in touch with political opinion in France,
and to watch with interest the spread of ideas which they
themselves held dear, noted with approval many remark-

1789. REVIVAL OF THE STATES-GENERAL L\ FRANCE. 293

able signs of activity across the Channel. While the strain
upon the false financial system of France had become so
great that the attempt to stop the hole in the money chest
broke the spirit of finance minister after finance minister,
a feeling in favor of some change in the system that made
such catastrophes possible seemed to be on the increase in
educated and even in aristocratic circles. Many English-
men of that day knew France, or at least Paris, fairly well.
If Pitt had paid the French capital but a single visit, Fox
was intimately acquainted with it, and Walpole was almost
as familiar with a superficial Paris as he was with a super-
ficial London. Dr. Johnson, not very long before the time
of which we write, had visited Paris with his friends the
Thrales, and had made the acquaintance of a brewer named
Santerre. Arthur Young travelled in France as he trav-
elled in England and in Ireland. On the other hand,
Frenchmen who were soon to be conspicuous advocates of
change were not unknown on the English side of the Chan-
nel. Mirabeau was known in London — not too favorably —
and the cousin of the French King, the Duke de Chartres,
afterwards Duke of Orleans, had moved in London society
and was to move there again. So when educated English-
men heard that Lafayette had demanded the revival of
the States-General, unused and almost forgotten these
two centuries, they knew that the friend of Washington
was not likely to ask for impossibilities. When the Duke
of Orleans set himself openly in opposition to the King,
his cousin, they recognized a significance in the act, and
when Mirabeau asserted himself as the champion of a
growing agitation in favor of an oppressed and unrepre-
sented people they remembered the big, vehement man
who had passed so much of his life in prisons and had
played the spy upon the Prussian Court. Gradually pre-
pared for some change in the administrative system of
France, they were not prepared for the rapid succession of
changes that followed upon the formal convocation of the
States-General in the spring of 1789.

The States-General was the nearest approach to a repre-
sentative parliamentary system that was known to France.

294 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lx.

But the States-General had not been summoned to aid the
deliberations of a French monarch in the course of many
reigns. France had lived under what was practically a
despotism untempered by an expression of organized public
opinion for several generations. It was so long since the
States-General had been convoked that the very forms and
ceremonies incidental to or essential to its convocation had
passed out of living memory, and had to be painfully ascer-
tained by much groping after authority and precedent. In
the end, however, authority and precedent were ascertained,
and the States-General_, composed of representatives of the
three estates of the realm — the Church, the Nobility, and
the People — met with much ceremony at Versailles. They
were called together for the ostensible purpose of dealing
with the financial difficulties that threatened to make the
country bankrupt. But it was soon clear that they, or at
least the majority of their members, intended to accom-
plish much more than that. The news that travelled slowly
in those days from the capital of France to the capital of
England grew to be interesting and important with an
interest and an importance that were not to cease in steady
activity for more than a quarter of a century. Event fol-
lowed event with startling rapidity. The members of the
Third Estate severed themselves from the Church and the
Nobility, met in the Tennis Court in Versailles, and de-
clared themselves a National Assembly. The people of
Paris, profoundly agitated, and fearing that the King in-
tended to suppress the insurgent National Assembly by
force, broke out into riots, which culminated in an attack
upon the famous and detested prison in the Faubourg St.
Antoine, the Bastille. The Bastille had not for many
years been a serious instrument of oppression, but its
record was an evil record, and it represented in the eyes
of the people of Paris all that was most detested and most
detestable in the old order. The Bastille was captured;
its few prisoners were borne in triumph through the
streets, while its commander, De Launay, was decapitated
and his head carried about on the point of a pike.

If the King of France had been a different man from

1789. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 295

Louis the Sixteenth he might have faced the rising storm
with some hope of success. But he could do nothing, would
do nothing. His advisers, his intimates, his kinsmen, his
captains, despairing at his vacillation and fearing that
they would be abandoned to the fury of insurgent Paris,
fled for their lives from a country that seemed to them as
if possessed by a devil. The country was possessed, pos-
sessed by the spirit of revolution. After ages of injustice
a chance had come for the oppressed, and the oppressed
had seized their chance and misused it, as the long op-
pressed always misuse sudden power. Eebellious Paris
marched upon Versailles, camped outside the King's
palace; broke in the night time into the King's palace,
slaying and seeking to slay. The Eoyal Family were res-
cued, if rescue it can be called, by the interposition of
Lafayette. They were carried in triumph to Paris. Still
nominally sovereign, they were practically prisoners in
their palace of the Tuileries. Europe looked on in aston-
ishment at the unexpected outbreak. In England at first
the leaders of liberal opinion applauded what they be-
lieved to be the dawn of a new and glorious era of political
freedom. Fox hailed in a rapture of exultation the fall of
the Bastille. The Duke of Dorset, the English ambassador
to France, saluted the accomplishment of the greatest revo-
lution recorded by history. Eager young men, nameless
then but yet to be famous, apostrophised the dawn of
liberty. " Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be
young was very heaven," Wordsworth wrote, with a wist-
ful regret, fifteen years after the Bastille had fallen, re-
calling with a kind of tragic irony the emotions of that
hour and contrasting them with his thoughts on the events
that had followed through half a generation. All over
England strenuous politicians, catching the contagion of
excitement from excited France, formulated their sym-
pathy with the Revolution in ardent, eloquent addresses,
formed themselves into clubs to propagate the principles
that were making France free and illustrious, and sent
delegates speeding across the Channel to convey to a
confident, constitution-making National Assembly the as-

206 A niSTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lx.

siirancc that the best hearts and the wisest brains in Eng-
land pulsed and moved in unison with their desires.

Such assurances were inaccurate and misleading. There
was one man in England the goodness of whose heart, the
wisdom of whose brain could scarcely be questioned, whose
censure in England, and not in England alone, was more
serious than the applause of a whole theatre of others.
At a moment when all who represented liberal thought
in politics, all who some ten years earlier had sympathized
with the American colonists, were showing a like sympathy
for the insurgent people of France, Edmund Burke made
himself conspicuous by the vehemence and the vigor of his
opposition to a movement which commanded the admira-
tion of his most intimate friends and closest political
allies. While the Revolution was still almost in its in-
fancy, while Sheridan and Fox vied with each other in the
warmth of their applause, Burke set himself to preach a
crusade against the Eevolution with all the unrestrained
ardor of his uncompromising nature. No words of Fox
or of Sheridan, no resolution of clubs, no delegated en-
thusiasm had anything like the same effect in aiding, that
Burke's famous pamphlet had in injuring the French
Revolution, in the eyes not merely of the mass of the Eng-
lish people, but in the eyes of a very great number of people
in the countries of Europe. People whose business it was
to be king, to use the famous phrase of a then reigning
prince, readily welcomed Burke's " Reflexions on the
French Revolution," which was soon disseminated all over
the Continent in a French translation. Naturally enough
it appealed to the Emperor of Germany, to the Empress
Catherine of Russia, to the French princes sheltering in
Coblentz and boasting of the revenge they would take on
the Revolution when the King should enjoy his own again.
Naturally enough it appealed to George the Third as a
book which every gentleman ought to read. Kings and
princes everywhere, who felt that at any moment their
own thrones might begin to rock unsteadily beneath them,
inevitably applauded the unexpected assistance of the
greatest orator and thinker of his age.

1790. BURKE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 297

Such applause alone would not have made Burke's
pamphlet the formidal)le weapon that it proved to be in
the hands of reaction^ or have brought about the grave re-
sults that may be directly attributed to Burke's pen. The
words of Burke created, the breath of Burke fanned, a
public opinion in England and abroad that was in direct
antagonism to everything that was meant by those who
formed and who guided or were driven by the Eevolution.
It would be hard to find a parallel in history for the influ-
ence thus exerted by a single man against so great a force.
All the conservatism of Burke's nature — the conservatism
that led him to regard the English Parliamentary system
of his day as well-nigh ideally perfect, and that prompted
him to resist so steadily and so successfully Pitt's proposals
of Parliamentary reform — concentrated itself against what
he believed to be the spirit of anarchy newly arisen in
France. The Revolution was but a year old, and was as
yet unstained by the worst excesses of the Terror, when
Burke launched his bolt, shouted his battle-cry, and ani-
mated Europe to arms. It must be admitted that many
of the evils which Burke prophesied in his review of the
nascent revolution were the stigmas of its prime. From
the premises he beheld he drew clear and definite conclu-
sions, which were only too unhappily verified as the tide
of revolution flowed. But it must also be remembered
that Burke was himself in no small measure the cause of
the realization of his own dark and tragic prognostica-
tions. Burke's arguments, Burke's eloquence, Burke's
splendid ability were among the most potent factors in
animating the hopes of the refugee princes, of inspiriting
their allies, and of forming that ill-advised and disastrous
coalition of the Powers against France which Danton
answered with the head of a king. It was the genius of
Burke that stemmed the sympathy between England and
a nation struggling to be free; it was the genius of Burke
that fostered the spirit of animosity to France which be-
gan with the march upon Paris, and which ended after
the disastrous defeats of the invaders, the deaths of the
King and Queen, and all the agonies of the Terror, in

298 A HISTORY OV THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lx.

creatin^]^ for En^lnnd, in common with Europe at large,
the most formi(lal)le enemy that she had ever known.

In spite of Burke and Burke's melancholy vaticinations
the course of tlie devolution in France seemed at first to
most liberal-minded Englishmen to move along reasonable
lines and to confine itself within the bounds of modera-
tion. Tlie excesses and outrages that followed immedi-
ately upon the first upheaval, the murders of Foulon and
Berthier in Paris, the peasant war upon the castles, were
regarded as the unavoidable, deplorable ebullitions of a
long dormant force which, under the guidance of capable
and honorable men, would be directed henceforward solely
to the establishment of a stable and popular system of
government. The men who were, or who seemed to be,
at the head of affairs in France had names that for the
most part commended themselves to such Englishmen as
liad anything more than a superficial knowledge of the
country. The fame of Lafayette, the hero of the American
war, seemed to answer for the conduct of the armv. In
Bailly, the astronomer whom unhappy chance had made
Mayor of Paris, constitutionalism recognized a man after
its own heart. The majority of the members of the Na-
tional Assembly seemed to be gloriously occupied in
evolving out of the chaos of the old order a new and
entirely admirable framework of laws modelled boldly
after the English pattern. IMost English observers
thought, in opposition to Burke, what the majority of the
members of the National Assembly themselves thought,
that the Eevolution was an accomplished fact, a concluded
page of history, brought about not indeed bloodlessly, but
still, on the whole, with comparatively slight shedding of
blood, considering the difficulty and the greatness of the
accomplished thing. The practical imprisonment of the
King and Queen within the walls of Paris, within the
walls of the Tuileries, seemed no great hardship in the
eyes of the Englishmen who sympathized Avith the aims
of those of the French revolutionaries with whom they
were acquainted. The French King himself seemed to be
reconciled to his lot, to have joined himself frankly and

1791. BURKE AND THE COALITIOX AGAINST FRANCE. 299

freely enough to the party of progress within his do-
minions, and to be as loyally eager to accept the new con-
stitution which the National Assembly was busy framing
as the most ardent patriot among its members. Even the
flight of the Royal Family, the attempted flight that be-
gan with such laborious pomp at Paris to end in such
pitiful disaster at Varennes, the flight that condemned
the King and Queen to a restraint far more rigorous than
before, did not greatly disturb British equanimity.

To the mind of Burke, however, his prophecies were al-
ready justifying themselves. He could see nothing in the
Revolution but its errors, and he hailed the coalition of
Europe against France as a league of light against the
powers of darkness. He broke away furiously from his
friends and allies of so many great political battles. He
could not understand, he could not bear to realize that men
who had struggled with him to champion the rights of the
American colonists, and to punish the oifences of Warren
Hastings, should now be either avowed sympathizers with
or indifferent spectators of the events that were passing in
France. He had loved Charles Fox greatly ever since Fox
had shaken off the traditions of Toryism and become the
most conspicuous champion of liberal ideas in England.
But he could not and would not forgive him for his atti-
tude towards the French Revolution and the French Revo-
lutionists. Burke saw nothing but evil in, thought nothing
but evil could come of, what was happening in France,
and he feared disasters for his own countrv if it became
impregnated with the poison of the revolutionary doctrine.
That Fox should in any way advocate that doctrine made
him in Burke's eyes an enemy of England, and not merely
of England but of the whole human race. There was no
middle way with Burke. Those who were not with him
were against him, not merely as a politician, but as a man.
To the day of his death, in 1797, he hated the Revolution
and denied his friendship to those who expressed any-
thing less than execration for its principles and its makers.
Although it is always easy to exaggerate the influence that
any single spirit may have upon a movement embracing

300 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lx.

many nationalities and many differont orders of mind,
it would be diflieult to overestimate the effect of Burke's
words and Burke's actions in animating the coalition of
monarchical Europe against insurgent France. And upon
a responsil)ility for the intervention of other States in the
affairs of France depends also a proportionate degree of
responsibility for the results of that intervention. Burke
was to see all the horrors he had so eloquently anticipated
realized as the direct consequence of the invasion of France
by the allied armies. The French people in the very hour
in which they believed their cherished revolution to be an
accomplished fact saw it menaced by the formidable league
which i^roposed to bring the King's brothers back in tri-
umph from Coblentz, and which threatened, in the ex-
traordinary language to which Brunswick put his name,
to blot Paris from the map of Europe if any injury were
done to the King, who had already formally accepted the
constitution that the Revolution had created. Paris went
mad with fear and rage. The September massacres, the
attacks upon the Tuileries, the proclaimed republicanism
of the Convention, the rise of the men of the Mountain,
^larat, Danton, and Robespierre, the execution first of the
King and then of the Queen, the dominion of the guillo-
tine and the Reign of Terror, were the direct results of a
coalition whose only excuse would have been its complete
success. The coalition proved to be an absolute failure.
To the cry that the country was in danger ragged legions
of desperate men rushed to the frontiers, and, to the as-
tonishment of the world, proved more than a match for
the armies that were sent against them.

Pitt was not himself eager to see England dragged into
the European quarrel with France. But it was not easy
for a minister who loved popularity, and who very sin-
cerely believed his presence at the head of affairs to be
essential to the welfare of the State, to avoid being in-
volved in the controversy. The result of the unsuccessful
coalition had been to increase the crimes that marked the
course of the French Revolution, and seemingly to justify
the fierce indignation of Burke. The country that had

1789-92. PITT AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 301

been profoundly impressed by Burke's eloquence was pro-
foundly shocked by the horrors that lost nothing of their
magnitude in the reports that crossed the Channel. The
country was flooded with fugitives from France, emigrants
who presented in themselves moving pictures of the suf-
ferings of those who were opposed to the Revolution, and
who were not slow to express their sense of the ruin that
had fallen upon their country. King George's native
shrewdness and native narrowness of mind had made him
from the first an active opponent of the Eevolution. He
declared that if a stop were not put to French principles
there would not be a king left in Europe in a few years.
To him, whose business above all things it had been to be
king, the prospect was unlovely and alarming. The fear
that he felt for his office was shared in varying degree by
all those who felt that thev would have much to lose if
the example set by France came to be followed in England.
The Church and the aristocracy, with all wealthy and vest-
ed interests, were naturally ranked to resist by all means
the spread of the new doctrines. There were a few noble-
men who, like Lord Stanhope and Lord Lauderdale, pro-
fessed themselves to be champions of the French Revolu-
tion ; there were some statesmen among the Opposition who
were either s}Tnpathizers with the Revolution or asserters
of the doctrine that it was no part of England's duty to
interfere with the way in which another nation chose to
govern herself. But the strength of public opinion was
against these, as it was against the minister who was as
eager as any Englishman living to remain on good terms
with France.

Pitt from the first had looked with a favorable e3'e upon
the changes that were taking place across the Channel.
To maintain a friendship with France was a radical part
of his policy. Friendship with France was essential
in his mind in order to combat the aggrandizement of Rus-
sia and Prussia, and friendship with France seemed more
possible under an enlightened constitution than under a
despotic king. While Burke, who could only make the
House of Commons smile and sneer by his denunciations

3U2 A IIIISTOUY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lx.

of Jaf'ol)in intrifxnos and his disjilay of Jacobin daggers,
was playing on tlio heart-strings of Enghmd and reviving
all the old hostility to France, Pitt pursued as long as he
was allowed to pursue it a policy of absolute neutrality.
But he was not long allowed to pursue that policy, al-
though he reaped some reward for it in a proof that the
French Government appreciated his intentions and shared
his desire for friendship. An English settlement at Noot-
ka Sound, in Vancouver Island, had been interfered with
by Spain. England was ready to assert her rights in
arms. Spain appealed to France for her aid by the terms
of the Family Compact. The French King and the French
j\[inisters were willing enough to engage in a war with
England, in the hope of diverting the course and weaken-
ing the power of the Kevolution. But the National As-
sembly, after a long and angry struggle, took away from
the King the old right to declare war, save with the consent
of the National Assemblv, which consent the National
Assembly, in that particular crisis, was decided not to give.
Pitt was delighted at this proof of the friendly spirit of
the French people and the advantage of his principle of
neutrality. But he was not able to act upon that prin-
ciple. The forces brought against him w^re too many
and too potent for him to resist. From the King on the
throne to the mob in the streets, who sacked the houses of
citizens known to be in S3''mpathy with the Revolution, the
English people as a whole were against him. The people
who sympathized with the Kevolution, who made speeches
for it in Westminster and formed Constitutional Clubs
which framed addresses of friendship to France, were but a
handful in the House of Commons, were but a handful
in the whole country. Their existence dazzled and deluded
the French Revolutionists into the belief that the heart of
England was with them at a time w^hen every feeling of
self-interest and of sentiment in England was against
them. Pitt clung desperately to peace. He thought, what
the Opposition thought then and for long years later, that
it was wisest to leave France to settle her internal affairs
and her form of government in her own way. When Eng-

1793. FRANCE DECLARES WAR AGAINST HOLLAND. 303

land no longer had an ambassador at the French capital
Pitt adhered doggedly, tenaciously, to a peace policy; per-
sisted in preserving the neutrality of Holland; was ready,
were it only possible, only permitted to him, to recognize
the new Eepublic. But even if the execution of Louis
the Sixteenth had not roused irresistible indignation in
England the action of the new Republic made the pro-
longation of peace an impossibility. When, in the winter
of 1792, the Convention made the famous offer of its aid
in arms to all peoples eager to be free, it must have been
plain to Pitt that, with France in that temper and England
tempest-tossed between hatred of the Revolution and fear
lest its theories were being insidiously fostered in her own
confines, the preservation of peace was a dream. The
dream was finally dissipated when France made ready to
attack Holland and, rejecting all possible negotiations, de-
clared war in the earlv davs of 1793.

At first the war went ill with France, and if the German
Powers had co-operated earnestly and honestly with Eng-
land it is at least within the limits of possibility that Paris
might have been occupied and the Revolution for the time
retarded. France seemed to be circled by foes; her en-
emies abroad were aided bv civil war at home. La Ven-
dee was in Royalist revolt; Marseilles and Lyons rose
aa^ainst the tyranny of Paris; Toulon, turning against the
Republic, welcomed an English fleet. For a moment the
arms of England and the aims of the Allies seemed to
have triumphed. But the passionate determination of the
French popular leaders and the mass of the French people
to save the Revolution seemed to inspire them with a
heroism that grew in proportion to the threatened danger.
Her armies were swollen with enthusiastic recruits. Her
internal revolts were coped with and crushed with savage
severity. Loyal La A'^endee was beaten. The rebellious
towns of Lyons and Marseilles almost ceased to exist under
the merciless repression of their conquerors. Many of the
allied armies were defeated, while those of the two German
Powers for their own selfish ends played the game of revo-
lutionary France by abstaining from any serious effort to

304 A HIJ^TORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lx.

advance into the country. Germany and Austria were con-
fident that they could whenever they pleased crush revolu-
tionary France, and they preferred to postpone the process,
in order to occupy themselves in a new partition of Poland,
which they could scarcely have carried out if the French
monarchy had been restored. If there was nothing to
justify the conduct of the two German Powers, there was
jnuch to warrant their confidence in their own strength
when they judged that the time had come for them to
exert it. They counted upon the known when they
measured their forces with those of revolutionary France;
they could not count upon the unknown quantity which
was to disturb all their calculations. The unknown quan-
tity asserted itself just at the moment when France, in
spite of some successes, seemed to be deeply wounded by
the loss of Toulon.

With the great port of Toulon in their hands the ad-
versaries of France might well believe that a serious blow
had been struck at her strength, and that the spirit which
so long had defied them might yet be broken. But the suc-
cess which had seemed to menace France so gravely proved
to be but the point of departure for a new era of French
glory. The occupation of Toulon is forever memorable,
because it gave an opportunity to a young lieutenant of
artillery in the French service, quite obscure in that ser-
vice and wholly unknown outside of it. The quick intelli-
gence of this young soldier perceived that the seizure of
a certain promontory left unguarded by the invaders would
place Toulon and those who had held it at the mercy of
the French cannon. The suggestion was acted upon; was
entirely successful; the English admiral was obliged to
retire with all his fleet, and Toulon was once again a
French citadel garrisoned by French soldiers. But the
importance of the event for France and the world lay not
in the capture but in the captor. Though Barras, confi-
dent in his dominion over the Directory, might sneer at
the young adventurer from Corsica and minimize his
share in a success that had suddenly made him conspicu-
ous, the name of Bonaparte then for the first time took its

1793. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 305

place in the history of Europe. The youth whose military
genius had enabled him to see and to seize upon the fatal
weakness in a well-defended city was destined to prove
the greatest soldier France had ever known, the greatest
as well as the most implacable enemy England had ever
to reckon with, and one of the greatest conquerors that
ever followed the star of conquest across the war-convulsed
earth.

This is the story of England, not the story of France,
and Napoleon was at his best and worst rather an influ-
ence upon than an integral part of English history. It
must be enough to say here that he is assumed to have
been born in Ajaccio, in Corsica, in 1769; that when he
was ten years old he tried to become French rather than
Italian — a feat which he never successfully accomplished
— by entering the military school of Brienne; that he
served Louis the Sixteenth with indifference and the Eevo-
lution with an ambition that Avas often baffled, and that
he struck the first of his many strokes at England when
he won Toulon for France.

;jUO A llIbTUUy OF THE FOUR (jEUKGES. ch. lxi.

CHArTER LXI.

" ninety-eight/'

England was not concerned merely with the successes
of France upon the Continent, with the French power of
resisting invasion and preserving its capital and its con-
stitution. The time was at hand when England was to
take the French Republic into consideration as a more
active enemy, whose enmity might take effect and be a
very serious menace at her own doors. The breath of the
French Revolution was to Great Britain like that of a
sudden storm which sweeps round some stately mansion
and finds out all its weak places and shatters some of its
outlying buildings, although it cannot unroof its firmest
towers or disturb its foundations. The weakest spot in
Great Britain, and indeed we might almost say in the
whole British Empire, was the kingdom of Ireland. Ire-
land had for long been in a state of what might almost be
called chronic rebellion against the rule of England. Eng-
land's enemies had always been regarded as Ireland's
friends by the Irishmen who claimed especially to repre-
sent the national aspirations of their country. This is a
fact which cannot be made too clear to the minds of Eng-
lishmen even at the present day, for the simple reason
that no one who is capable of forming a rational idea on
the subject can doubt that where a government is persist-
ently hated that government must have done much to de-
serve the hate.

It is not necessary here to undertake a survey of the
many grievances of which Ireland complained under the
rule of Great Britain. One grievance which was especially
felt during the reign of George the Third came from the
persistent refusal of the Hanoverian Sovereign to listen

1798. IRISH CATHOLIC DISABILITIES. 301

to any proposals for the relief of the Roman Catholics
from the civil and religious disabilities under which they
suffered. The Catholics constituted five-sixths of the
whole population of Ireland, and up to the time of the
War of Independence in America no Catholic in Great
Britain or Ireland could sit in Parliament, or vote for the
election of a member of Parliament, or act as a barrister
or solicitor, or sit on a bench of magistrates or on a grand
jury, or hold land, or obtain legal security for a loan. No
doubt the state of the penal laws as they then existed was
mitigated when compared with that which had prevailed
but a short time before, when an ordinary Catholic had
hardly any right to do more than live in Ireland, and a
Catholic priest had not even a legal right to live there.
But up to the time when the growing principles of liberty
manifested themselves in the overthrow of the feudal sys-
tem in France the Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland
were practically excluded from any approach to civil or
religious liberty. Ireland had a Parliament, but it was
a Parliament of Protestants, elected by Protestants, and
it w^as in fact a mere department of the King's Adminis-
tration. The American War of Independence suddenly
awakened wild hopes in the breasts of all oppressed na-
tionalities, and the Irish Catholic population was among
the first to be quickened by the new life and the new hope.
The national idea was not, however, at first for a separa-
tion from England. Ireland was then for the most part
under the leadership of Henry Grattan, a patriot, states-
man, and orator — an orator whom Charles James Fox de-
scribed as the " Irish Demosthenes," and whom Byron
glorified as " with all that Demosthenes wanted endued,
and his rival and victor in all he possessed."

Grattan's purpose was not separation from England or
the setting up of an independent republic. An Ireland
enjoying religious equality for all denominations and pos-
sessing a Parliament thoroughly independent of that sit-
ting at Westminster would have satisfied all his patriotic
ambition. In fact, what Grattan would have desired for
Ireland is exactly such a system as is now possessed by one

308 ^ HISTORY OF TIIP: FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

of the provinces of Canada or Australia. When the alli-
ance between France and independent America began to
threaten Great Britain, and the English Government prac-
fically acknowledged its inability to provide for the de-
fence of Ireland, Henry Grattan, with other Irish patriots
of equal sincerity, and some of them of even higher social
rank, started the Irish Volunteer movement, to be a bul-
wark of the country in case of foreign invasion. When the
Irish patriots found themselves at the head of an army of
disciplined volunteers they naturally claimed that the
country which was able to defend herself should be al-
lov/ed also an independent Parliament with which to make
her domestic laws. They obtained their end, at least for
the moment, and at least to all outward appearance, and
Grattan was enabled to declare that for the first time he
addressed a free Parliament in Ireland and to invoke the
spirit of Swift to rejoice over the event. Catholic emanci-
pation, however, had not yet been secured, although Grat-
tan and those who worked with him did their best to carry
it through the Parliament in Dublin. The obstinacy oi
King George still prevailed against every eifort made by
the more enlightened of his ministers. Pitt was in his
brain and heart a friend of Catholic emancipation, but he
had at last given way to the King's angry and bitter pro-
tests and complaints, and had made up his mind never
again to trouble his Sovereign with futile recommenda-
tions. It so happened that a new Viceroy sent over to Ire-
land in 1794, Earl Fitzwilliam, became impressed with a
sense of the justice of the claims for Catholic emancipa-
tion, and therefore gave spontaneous and honorable en-
couragement to the hopes of the Irish leaders. The result
was that after three months' tenure of office he was sud-
denly recalled, and the expectations of the Irish leaders
and the Irish people were cruelly disappointed.

From that moment it must have been clear to any keen
observer in Ireland that the influence of Grattan and his
friends could no longer control the action of Irish na-
tionalists in general, and that the policy of Grattan would
no longer satisfy the popular demands of Ireland. Short

1791. THE UNITED IRISHMEN. 309

as had been the Irish independent Parliament's term of
existence, it had been long enough to satisfy most Irish-
men that the control of the King's accepted advisers was
almost as absolute in Dublin as in Westminster. To the
younger and more ardent spirits among the Irish national-
ists the setting up of a nominally independent Irish Par-
liament had always seemed but a poor achievement when
compared with the change which their national ambition
longed for and which the conditions of the hour to all ap-
pearance conspired to render attainable. These young men
were now filled with all the passion of the French Revolu-
tion; they had always longed for the creation of an inde-
pendent Ireland; they insisted that Grattan's compromise
had already proved a failure, and in France, the enemy
of England, they found their new hopes for the emanci-
pation of Ireland.

There were among the Irish rebels, as they were soon to
declare themselves, many men of great abilities and of the
purest patriotic purpose. Among the very foremost of
these were Theobald Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward Fitz-
gerald. Both these men, like all the other leaders of the
movement that followed, were Protestants, as Grattan
was. Wolfe Tone was a young man of great capacity and
promise, who began his public career as secretary to an
association formed for the purpose of effecting the relief
of the Eoman Catholics from the civil and religious dis-
abilities which oppressed them. This society, after awhile,
was named the Association of United Irishmen. The
United Irishmen were at that time only united for the
purpose of obtaining Catholic Emancipation. The associa-
tion, as we shall soon see, when it failed of its first object
became united for other and sterner purposes. Wolfe
Tone was a young man of a brilliant Byronic sort of nat-
ure. There was much in his character and temperament
which often recalls to the mind of the reader the generous
impulse, the chivalric ardor, and the impetuous eccentric-
ity of Byron. Tone, as a youth, was a careless student, or,
indeed, to put it more distinctly, he only studied the sub-
jects he cared about and was in the habit of neglecting his

310 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

collegiate tasks until the hour arrived when it became ab-
solutely necessary that he should master them enough at
least to pass muster for each emergency. He was a keen
and close student of any subject which had genuine in-
terest for him, but such subjects were seldom those which
had anything to do with his academical career. He stud-
ied law after a fashion in one of the London Inns of Court,
and he was called to the Bar in due course; but he had no
inclination whatever for the business of an advocate, and
his mind was soon drawn away from the pursuit of a legal
career. He had a taste for literature and a longing for
travel and military adventure in especial, and for a time
he lived a pleasant, free and easy, Bohemian sort of life,
if we may use the term Bohemian in describing days that
existed long before Henri Murger had given the word its
modern application.

One of the many odd, original ideas which floated like
bubbles across Wolfe Tone's fancy was a scheme for found-
ing a sort of military colony in some island in the South
Seas, to act as a check upon the designs and enterprises of
Spain against the British Empire. Tone took his idea so
seriously that he wrote to William Pitt, the Prime Minis-
ter, describing and explaining his project and asking for
Government help in order to make it a reality. As will be
easily understood, Pitt took no notice of the proposal, hav-
ing probably a good many more suggestions made to him
every day as to the best defences of England than he could
possibly consider in a week. It is somewhat curious, how-
ever, to find that Wolfe Tone should at one period of his
life have formed the idea of helping England to defend
herself against her enemies. Some historians have gone
so far as to opine that if Pitt could have seen his way to
take Tone's proposition seriously, and to patronize the
young man, the world might never have heard of the in-
surrection of " Ninety-Eight." But no one who gives any
fair consideration to the whole career and character of
Tone can have any doubt that Tone's passionate patriot-
ism would have made him the champion of his own coun-
try, no matter what prospects the patronage of an Eng-

1763-98. THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. 311

lish minister might have offered to his ambition. At the
time when Tone was scheming out his project for the
island in the South Seas the leaders in the national move-
ment in Ireland still believed that the just claims of their
people were destined to receive satisfaction from the wis-
dom and justice of the English Sovereign. When it be-
came apparent that Catholic Emancipation was not to be
obtained through George the Third and through Pitt, then
Wolfe Tone made up his mind that there was no hope for
Ireland but in absolute independence, and that that inde-
pendence was only to be won by the help of Xapoleon
Bonaparte and of France. In the mean time Tone had
taken a step which brilliant, gifted, generous, and im-
pecunious young men usually take at the opening of their
career — he had made a sudden marriage. Matilda Wither-
ington was only sixteen when Tone persuaded her to accept
him as her husband and to share his perilous career. Ko-
mance itself hardly contains any story of a marriage more
imprudent and yet more richly rewarded by love. Tone
adored his young wife and she adored him. Love came in
at their door and, though poverty entered there too, love
never flew out at the window. The whole story of Wolfe
Tone's public career may be read in the letters which, dur-
ing their various periods of long separation, no difficulties
and no dangers ever prevented him from writing to his
wife. When he made up his mind to consecrate himself
to the national cause of Ireland, and, if necessary, to die
for it, he set forth his purpose to his wife, and she never
tried to dissuade him from it. It is told of her that at one
critical period of his fortunes she concealed from him the
fact that she expected to become a mother, lest the knowl-
edge might chill his patriotic enthusiasm or make him
unhappy in his enterprise.

Tone went out to America and got into council with the
representative of the French Eepublic there; then he re-
turned to Europe, and he entered into communication with
Carnot and with Napoleon Bonaparte. To these and to
others he imparted his plans for a naval and military ex-
pedition from France to approach the coast of Ireland, to

312 A IIISTOUY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. en. lxi.

land troops there, and to make the beginning of a great
Irish rebellion, which must distract the attention and ex-
haust the resources of England and place her at the feet
of all-conquering France. Tone felt certain that if an
adequate number of French troops were landed on the
western or southern shore of Ireland the whole mass of
the population there would rally to the side of the invaders,
and England would have to let Ireland go or waste herself
in a hopeless struggle. Tone insisted in all his arguments
and expositions that Ireland must be free and independent,
and that no idea of conquering and annexing her must
enter into the minds of the French statesmen and soldiers.
Napoleon and Carnot approved of Tone's schemes as a
whole, but Tone could not help seeing that Napoleon cared
nothing whatever about the independence or prosperity of
Ireland, and only took up with the whole scheme as a
convenient project for the embarrassment and the distrac-
tion of England. Tone received a commission in the army
of the French Eepublic, and became the soul and the in-
spiration of the policy which at fitful moments, when his
mind was not otherwise employed, Napoleon was inclined
to carry out on the Irish shores.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald was a son of the great ducal
house of Eeinster. He was born in the same year as Wolfe
Tone; he was to die in the same year. It was his evil
fortune to have to fight for the cause of King George
against the uprising of the patriotic colonists of North
America. He afterwards became filled with the ideas of
the French Revolution, and got into trouble more than
once by expressing his sentiments too freely while yet he
wore the uniform of the British army. In Paris he be-
came acquainted with Thomas Paine and was greatly
taken with the theories and charmed with the ways of the
revolutionary thinker, and in the company of Paine and
congenial associates he took part in Republican celebra-
tions which became talked of in England and led to his
dismissal from the army. Lord Edward Fitzgerald had
a strong love of adventure and exploration, and had con-
trived to combine with his military career in the New

1763-98. LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. 313

World a number of episodes almost any one of which
might have supplied the materials for a romance. He was
a man of a thoroughly lovable nature, gallant, high-spir-
ited, generous. Like Wolfe Tone, he had made a romantic
marriage. His wife was the famous Pamela, the beautiful
girl who was ward to Madame de Genlis, and commonly
believed to be the daughter of the Duke of Orleans, Phi-
lippe Egalite. Louis Philippe, afterwards King of France,
was one of the witnesses at the marriage ceremony. Lord
Edward was perfectly happy with his young and beautiful
wife until the political events came on which gave the sud-
den and tragic turn to his life. He was a member of the
Irish Parliament for many years, and had on several oc-
casions supported the policy which was advocated by Grat-
tan. He too, however, soon made up his mind, as Wolfe
Tone had done, that there was nothing to be expected from
the Sovereign and his ministers, and he became an active
member of the Society of United Irishmen when that as-
sociation ceased to be a constitutional body and set its heart
on armed rebellion. Ijord Edward went over to France
and worked hard there for the purpose of obtaining armed
assistance for the Irish cause, but he returned to Ireland
to work up the rebellious movement there while Tone re-
mained in France to influence as well as he could the policy
of N'apoleon and Carnot.

Among the other distinguished Irishmen who worked
at home or in France — sometimes at home and sometimes
in France — to promote the rebellion were Arthur O'Con-
nor and Thomas Addis Emmet. Arthur O'Connor came
of a great Irish family; Thomas Addis Emmet, after the
failure of the rebellious movement, escaped to the United
States and made a great position for himself as an advo-
cate in New York. A younger brother of Thomas Emmet
also took part in the organization of " Ninety-Eight," but
the fate of Eobert Emmet will have a place to itself in
this chapter of our history.

One fact has to be mentioned, and must be kept con-
stantly in mind when we are studying the grim story of
** Ninety-Eight." Every step taken by the rebel leaders

314 A HISTOUY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

was almost instantly made known to the English Govern-
ment. The spy, the hired informer, was then, as he has
always been, in the very thick of the Irish national move-
ment. Some of the informers in " Ninety-Eight " were
of a different class from that of the ordinary police spy.
and it has been made quite certain by sul)sequent dis-
coveries that Wolfe Tone and Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Con-
nor and the Emmets were in the closest friendly associa-
tion with men whom they believed to be as genuine Irish
patriots as themselves, but who were all the time in the
pay of Pitt, and were keeping him well informed of every
plan and project and movement of their leaders. As po-
litical morals were then and are perhaps even now, it would
be absurd to find fault with Pitt because he made use of
the services of spies and informers to get at the plans of
a number of men who proposed to invite a foreign enemy
of England to invade the Irish shores, and were doing all
they could to secure by armed rebellion the independence
of Ireland. The wonder that will now occur to every
reasonable mind is that the Irish leaders should have
failed to guess that whatever money would do would be
done by the English Government, as it would have been
done by any other Government under similar conditions, to
get at a knowledge of their designs and to counteract them.
At all events, it is quite certain that while Tone and Fitz-
gerald and their comrades were playing their gallant,
desperate game, the British Minister was quietly looking
over their shoulders and studying their cards.

Napoleon Bonaparte, meanwhile, seems to have been but
half-hearted about the scheme for the invasion of Ireland.
He had many other schemes in his mind, some of which
probably appeared more easy of accomplishment, and at
all events promised a more immediate result than the
proposed flank attack on the power of England. It is cer-
tain that Wolfe Tone had long intervals of depression and
despondency, against which it needed all the buoyancy of
his temperament to sustain him. At last a naval expedi-
tion was resolved on and despatched. In the late Decem-
ber of 1796 a small French fleet, with about 14,000 troops

1797. A FRENCH FLEET IN BANTRY BAY. 315

on board, under the command of General Hoche, made for
the southwestern shores of Ireland. Tone was on board
one of the war vessels in his capacity as a French officer
serving under General Hoche. The weather proved utterly
unfavorable to the expedition. The war vessels were con-
stantly parting company. The admiral's vessel, together
with several others, was lost to sight on the very first night,
and the heart of Tone grew sick as he saw that with every
fresh outburst of the tempest the chances even of effecting
a landing grew less and less. Most of the vessels entered
Bantry Bay and lay helplessly at anchor there, but there
was no landing. Tone's despondency and powerless rage
as he foresaw the failure of his project might have been
still deeper if he could have known how utterly unprepared
the authorities of Dublin Castle were for any sort of in-
vasion. Tone had observed already, as the expedition
made its way from Brest, that they had not seen a single
English vessel of war anywhere on the sea or around the
Irish coasts. But he could have had no idea of the manner
in which the British Government had intrusted the keeping
of the island to the protection of the winds and of the
fates. A letter written from Dublin by Elizabeth Moira
Hastings, widow of the first Earl of Moira, throws a
curious light on the state of things which existed among
the governing authorities at the time of the invasion, and
amazingly illustrates the odd rumors and wild conjectures
which were floating about at the time. Writing to a
friend in a different part of Ireland on January 19, 1797,
Lady Moira says:

" Our escape has been miraculous : the French fleet left
Brest . . . mistook the Durseys for Mizen Head, and
therefore did not make their entrance into Bantry Bay
till the 24th, on which very day the storm arose and pre-
vented the greater part of their fleet getting into the Bay,
driving the greatest part of them out to sea. You will
observe that it was on the 19th Lord i\Ialmesbury had
orders to quit Paris. He undoubtedly had purchased in-
telligence at a high price, being duped in that inquiry by
the manoeuvres of the Directorv, and srave false information

316 A mSTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

to England. Had the French landed on the 18th or 19th,
which they might have done, had they not mistaken the
Durseys, we should have had the French now governing
in this metropolis. All agree that there never was an
expedition so completely planned, and in some points so
curiously furnished — the most beautiful ladies of easy
virtue from Paris were collected and made a part of the
freight. Hoche's mistress accompanied him, and his car-
riage was on board ' La Ville d'Orient,' taken by the
^ Druid.' The hussars taken on board that vessel were
those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of the un-
fortunate Lewis — they are clothed in scarlet jackets trim-
med with gold and fur, and wear each the butcher's steel,
on which they whet their knives, to whet their swords with.
It is reported that Hoche and Reilly (one of the admirals)
are gone off to America with seven hundred thousand
pounds in specie that was on board their vessel to pay the
troops. Others think the vessel has sunk, for neither of
these personages or the frigate ' La Fraternite,' which
they were on board, has been seen since they quitted Brest
by any of the French vessels. What a fortunate person
^Ir. Pitt is ! and what a benefit is good luck to its possessor !
The troops are all marching back to their old quarters;
Cork and its environs indignant at Government for leaving
them again to the entire care of Providence. ... It is a
general belief among all parties that the French will re-
visit Ireland, and at no distant period — probably the next
dark nights. If the storms now prevented them they have
learned how possible the attempt is, and how can such a
coast be guarded? There has been much show of spirit
and loyalty, and yet I thank God they did not land !"

The words of Wolfe Tone, taken from his journal, may
be accepted as the epitaph of the first French expedition.
" It was hard," says Tone, " after having forced my way
thus far, to be obliged to turn back ; but it is my fate, and
I must submit. . . . Well, England has not had such an
escape since the Spanish Armada; and that expedition,
like ours, was defeated by the weather ; the elements fight
against us, and courage is of no avail/'

1797. THE FRENCH AND DUTCH TO AID IRELAND. 317

The French did return, as Lady Moira had predicted.
They returned more than once, but there was a long in-
terval between the first and the second visitation, and there
were negotiations between the French and the Dutch He-
public — the Batavian Kepublic, as it was called — which
had been forming an alliance with France. Xeither the
French Republic nor the Batavian felt any particular in-
terest in the Irish movement, or cared very much whether
Ireland obtained her national independence or had to live
without it. France, of course, was willing to make use of
Ireland as a vantage-ground from which to harass Great
Britain, and the Batavian Republic, which had for some
time been lapsing out of European notice, was eager to
distinguish herself and to play a conspicuous political part
once again. The idea at first was that Holland should
furnish the naval expedition and France contribute the
troops — 5000 Frenchmen, under the command of General
Hoche, who were to land in Ireland and form the centre
and rallying point for the United Irishmen. The Ba-
tavian Republic, however, did not seem anxious to give all
the military glory of the affair to France, and some ex-
cuses were made on the ground that the discipline of the
Dutch navy was somewhat too severe for the soldiers of
France to put up with. General Hoche seems to have acted
with great disinterestedness and moderation under trying
conditions. He saw that the Dutch were anxious to make
a name for themselves once more, and he feared that if
he were to press for the embarkation of the French sol-
diers it might lead to the abandonment of the whole ex-
pedition. Longing as he was for the chance to distinguish
himself in any attack upon England, he controlled his
eagerness and consented that the Dutch should have the
undertaking all to themselves. Poor Wolfe Tone had to
wait and look on all this time, eating his own heart, ac-
cording to the Homeric phrase. He has left us in his
journal a description of his feelings as he saw the days go
by without any movement being made to harass the Eng-
lish enemy, and of his own emotions when what might
have seemed the heaven-sent chance of the mutiny at the

318 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. CH. lxi.

Nore broke out in the English fleet and no advantage
could be taken of it to forward the chances of the expedi-
tion from the Texel. For now again the skies and the
winds had come to the defence of England, and the Dutch
fleet was kept to its anchorage in its own waters. Various
plans of warfare were schemed out by the Batavian Re-
public, with the hope of putting the English naval authori-
ties on a wrong scent, but all these schemes were suddenly
defeated by the orders given to the Dutch admiral to put
to sea at once. He did put to sea, and was encountered by
Admiral Duncan, and the result was the great victory of
Camperdown, won by the English over the Dutch after
splendid fighting on both sides. Admiral Duncan thereby
became Lord Camperdown and the Batavian Eepublic
dropped all ideas of a naval expedition against England.
Meanwhile the gallant General Hoche had died, and Wolfe
Tone lost a true friend, with whom, from the beginning of
their acquaintance, he had been in thorough sympathy.

All this time the condition of things in Ireland was be-
coming desperate. After the appearance of the fleet in
Bantry Bay, and the hopes which it created on the one side
and the alarms on the other, the ruling powers in Dublin
Castle, and indeed at Westminster, had no other idea but
that of crushing out the rebellious spirit of the Irish
people by Coercion Acts and by military law. The na-
tional sentiment of Ireland counted for nothing with them.
It may be safely laid down as an axiom in political history
that the men who are not able to take account of the force
of what they would call a mere national sentiment in pub-
lic afl^airs are not and never can be fit to carry on the great
work of government. Ireland was overrun by militia regi-
ments, sent over from England and Scotland, who had no
sympathy whatever with the Irish people, and regarded
them simply as revolted slaves to be scourged back into
submission or shot down if they persevered in refusing to
submit. Other forces representing law and order were
found in the yeomanry, who were chiefly Orangemen and
officered by Orangemen, and who regarded the Catholic
peasantry as their born enemies. A state of tumult raged

1798. THE BRINK OF AN IRISH REBELLION. 319

through the greater part of the unhappy island, and there
cannot be the slightest doubt that the floggings, hangings,
and shootings inflicted by the militia and by the yeomen
were in many cases done not so much in punishment as in
anticipation of rebellious movements on the part of the
Catholics. In the mean time preparations were unquestion-
ably going on in many Irish counties, more especially in
Ulster, for an outbreak of rebellion. The organization
of United Irishmen was adding to its numbers of sworn-in
members every day, and the making of pikes was a busy
manufacture all over many of the counties. Grattan and
some of his friends made many efforts in the Irish House
of Commons to induce the Government to devise some
means for the pacification of Ireland other than Coercion
Acts, the scourge, the bullet, and the gallows. Finding
their efforts wholly in vain, Grattan, Arthur O'Connor,
Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his brother, and many other
men of high character and position withdrew from the
Dublin Parliament altogether, and left to the Government
the whole responsibility for the results of its policy. It
is alwa3^s to be regretted that a man like Grattan should
ever recede from his position as a constitutional patriot in
the assembly where alone his counsels can have any practi-
cal weight; but of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur
O'Connor the same is not to be said, for these men and
many of their friends had made up their minds that the
time had come when only in armed rebellion there remain-
ed any hope for Ireland. In the English Parliament some
efforts were made by Charles James Fox and by Whit-
bread to obtain an inquiry into the real cause of the
troubles in Ireland, but the attempts were ineffectual, and
the authorities at Dublin Castle were allowed to carry out
their own peculiar policy without control or check of any
kind.

Once again the fates were suddenly unpropitious to the
Irish national movement. The force which was intended
for Ireland was siiddenly ordered to form a part of the
expedition which Bonaparte was leading against Egypt.
Thereupon the chiefs of the L^nited Irishmen began to see

320 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

that there was not rrmch hope to be founded on any help
to come from France, and it was decided that Ireland
should enter into open armed rebellion under the command
of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It was confidently believed
that all but a small number of the Irish counties would
rise to arms at once under such leadership, and the Irish
leaders little knew how completely the Government was
supplied with the knowledge of all the Irish national plans
and movements. Indeed, there seems only too much reason
to believe that the policy of Pitt had long been to force
the Irish into premature rebellion by the persistent appli-
cation of the system of coercion, represented by what were
called " free quarters '' — in other words, the billeting of
soldiers indiscriminately among the houses of the peas-
antry, thereby leaving the wives and daughters of Irish
Catholics at the mercy of a hostile soldiery — by the burn-
ing of houses, the shooting dowTi of almost defenceless
crowds, and the flogging and hanging of men and women.
Certain it is that many of the British officers high in
command protested loudly against such a policy, and that
some of them positively refused to carry it out, and pre-
ferred to incur any rebuke rather than be the instruments
of such indiscriminate oppression. Pitt and the authori-
ties at Dublin Castle probably reasoned with themselves
that since the rebellion was certain to come it was better
to press it on prematurely, so that it might be easily
crushed, rather than leave it to take its own time and put
its plans into execution when they should have arrived at a
formidable maturity.

The rebellion broke out in the early part of 1798. It
had some brilliant temporary successes in Wexford County
and in other counties. In one part of Wexford the move-
ment was literally forced upon the people by the out-
rageous conduct of the militia and the yeomanry. One
of the local Irish priests, Father John Murphy, had used
all his efforts up to the last in the cause of order, and had
been most energetic in persuading the people to give up
their pikes and other weapons to the local authorities.
After the people had surrendered their arms the scourg-

1798. FATHER JOHN MURPHY AND MILES BYRNE. 321

mg, shooting, and hanging went on just the same as be-
fore, and Father John Murphy and numbers of his parish-
ioners were forced to take refuge in the woods. Then
for the first time Father Murphy became a rebel. More
than that, he became all at once an insurgent general. He
put himself at the head of the despairing peasantry, and
he suddenly developed a decided talent for the work of an
insurgent chief. His people were armed for the most part
only with pitchforks and with spades. Their pikes had
nearly all been surrendered; only some few of the farm-
ing class had guns; and there was, of course, no sort of
heavy artillery. Father Murphy showed his people how
to barricade with carts the road through which a body of
cavalry were expected to pass, and at the right moment,
just when the cavalry found themselves unexpectedly ob-
structed, the insurgents suddenly attacked them with pitch-
forks and spades, won a complete victory, and utterly
routed their opponents. By this success the rebels became
possessed of a considerable number of carbines, and were
put in heart for further enterprises. Father John Murphy
won several other victories, and for the hour was master
of a large part of Wexford. One of those who took service
under him was a young man. Miles Byrne, scarcely eigh-
teen 3^ears of age, who afterwards rose to high distinction
in the French army under Napoleon, and maintained his
position and repute under the Eestoration, and might have
been seen up to the year 1862, a white-headed, white-beard-
ed veteran, sunning himself in the gardens of the Tuil-
eries. Father Murphy, however, was not able long to hold
out. The want of weapons, the want of money and of all
other resources, and no doubt the want of military ex-
perience, put him and his men at a hopeless disadvantage,
and he was defeated in the end, and was executed in the
early summer of 1798.

While the rebellion lasted there were, no doubt, many
excesses on both sides. The rebels sometimes could not be
prevented by their leaders from fearful retaliations on
those at whose hands they had seen their kindred suffer.
The gallant Miles Byrne himself has told us in his memoirs
VOL. m. — 11

322 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch.lxi.

how in certain instances he found it impossible to check
the rage of his followers until their fury had found some
satisfaction in what they believed to be the wild justice
of revenge. No one, however, who has studied the history
of the times even as it is told by loyalist narrators will feel
surprised that the policy which had forced on the outbreak
of the rebellion should have driven the rebels into retalia-
tion on the few occasions when they had the upper hand
and found their enemies at their mercy. It has never
been denied that the excesses committed by the rebels
were but the spasmodic outbreaks of the passion of re-
taliation, and that the Irish leaders everywhere did all
they could to keep their followers within the bounds of
legitimate warfare. It is not necessary to follow out in
detail the story of the rebellion. With no material help
from abroad there could have been but one end to it, and
the end soon came. A peasantry armed with pikes could
hardly hold their own for very long even against the
militia imported from Great Britain, the Orange yeo-
manry, and the Hessian troops hired from Germany, to say
nothing of the regular English soldiers, who were armed
and trained to war. Even the militiamen and the yeo-
manry had better weapons than the pikemen who followed
their Irish leaders to the death. Before the rebellion was
wholly crushed Lord Edward Fitzgerald was dead. The
plans arranged by the leaders of the movement had ap-
pointed a certain day for the rising to begin ; the outbreak
in Wexford, as has already been shown, was entirely unpre-
meditated, and merely forced on by events; and, as might
have been expected, the plans were betrayed to the authori-
ties of Dublin Castle. Some of the leaders were instantly
arrested, and Lord Edward had to fly and conceal himself.
His hiding-place was soon discovered, and he was arrested
in Thomas Street, Dublin, on May 19, 1798. Lord Edward
at first refused to surrender, and fought desperately for
his life. He wounded some of his assailants, and re-
ceived himself a bullet in his body. He was then carried
to prison, where he died sixteen days after. " Fitly might
the stranger lingering here," as Byron says of another hero,

1798. IRELAND INVADED BY GENERAL HUMBERT. 323

<e

pray for that gallant spirit's bright repose." Even
George the Third himself might have felt some regret for
the state of laws which had turned Edward Fitzgerald
into an enemv.

Suddenly another attempt to help Ireland and harass
England was made from the French side of the English
Channel. Bonaparte was away on his Egyptian expedi-
tion, and the Directorv in his absence did not wish to fore-
go all idea of sending a force to Ireland, but were evi-
dently not very strong on the subject and did not seem
quite to know how to set about such a business. For
awhile they kept two or three small bodies of troops ready
at certain ports within easy reach of the English shores,
and a number of vessels at each port waiting for sudden
orders. General Humbert, an adventurous soldier of for-
tune, who had courage enough but not much wisdom, grew
impatient at the long delay of the Directory, and thought
he could not do better to force the hand of the Directory
than to start an expedition himself. Accordingly he took
command of a force of about a thousand men in number
which had been placed at his disposal for an undefined
date, and with three or four ships to convey his men he
made for the Irish shores. He landed at Killala Bav, in
the province of Connaught, and he made his way inland
as far as the county of Longford. The Irish peasantry
rallied round him in considerable numbers, and were re-
ceived by him as part of the army and invested with the
French uniform. He began his march with a sudden and
complete victory over a body of English troops considerably
outnumbering his own force, but whom he managed clever-
ly to surprise, and among whom a regular panic seems to
have set in. Humbert's scheme was, however, hopeless.
The part of the country through which he was marching
was thinly populated, and large bodies of English troops,
under experienced commanders, were approaching him
from all sides. By the time he had reached the county of
Longford he found himself faced, or indeed all but sur-
rounded, by the royal troops under the command of Lord
Cornwallis. There was nothing for Humbert but to sur-

324 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

render, and he and his French followers were treated as
prisoners of war after a final and brilliant fight and sent
back to France. The Irish insurgents who had fought
under his leadership dispersed and fled after the sur-
render, well knowing that they would not be included in its
terms and treated as prisoners of war, and they were pur-
sued by the royal troops and most of them were killed.
Matthew Tone, a brother of Wolfe Tone, was one of those
who had fought under Humbert. He was made prisoner,
taken to Dublin, and executed there within a few days.
Thus ended the second expedition from France for the
relief of Ireland.

Wolfe Tone meanwhile was waiting in France, hoping
against hope. He had as yet known nothing of the fort-
unes and failure of Humbert's expedition. Some ex-
tracts from a letter written to his wife about this time have
a melancholy interest.

" Touching money matters, I have not yet received a
sou, and last night I was obliged to give my last five
guineas to my countrymen here. I can shift better than
they can. I hope to receive a month's pay to-day, but it
will not be possible to remit you any part of it; you must
therefore carry on the war as best you can for three or four
months, and before that is out we will see further. ... I
am mortified at not being able to send you a remittance,
but you know it is not my fault.

" We embark about 3000 men, with 12 pieces of artil-
lery, and I judge about 20,000 stand of arms. We are
enough, I trust, to do the business, if we arrive safe.

" With regard to myself, I have had every reason to be
satisfied; I stand fair with the General and my cama-
rades; I am in excellent health and spirits; I have great
confidence in the success of our enterprise; and, come
what may, at least I will do what is right. The time is so
short that I must finish this; I will, if possible, write to
you again, but if we should unexpectedly sail my next will
be, I hope, from Ireland."

The embarking to which Tone referred was that of an
expedition which the Directory had at last resolved to

1798. THE CAPTURE OF WOLFE TONE. 325

despatch from Brest for the Irish shore. By a somewhat
touching coincidence Tone found himself on board a war-
vessel called the " Hoche/' which was under the command
of the admiral of the little fleet. This expedition con-
sisted of one sail of the line and eight frigates, with 3000
French soldiers. It sailed on September 20, 1798; but
the destinies were against it, as they had been against its
predecessors, and contrary winds compelled the admiral
to make a wide sweep out of what would otherwise have
been its natural course. It was not until October 10 that
the little fleet, then reduced to four vessels — the others
had been scattered — reached the shore of Lough Swilly,
on the northwest coast of Ireland, and was there encoun-
tered by a fleet of six English sail of the line and two
frigates. The admiral of the French fleet saw that there
was no chance whatever of his fighting his way through
such an opposition, and he made up his mind to offer the
best resistance he could for the honor of the French flag.
He promptly gave signals for the lighter vessels, which
would have been of little practical service in such a strug-
gle, to make the safest retreat they could, and with his own
vessel resolved rather perhaps to do and die than to do or
die. A boat came from one of the frigates to take his final
instructions, and he and all the French officers, naval and
military, who were on board the " Hoche " strongly urged
Wolfe Tone to go to the frigate in the boat and thus save
his life. They pointed out to him that if they were capt-
ured they must be treated as prisoners of war, but that no
mercy would be shown to him, a subject of King George,
taken in French uniform. Wolfe Tone peremptorily de-
clined to accept the General's advice. It should never be
said of him, he declared, that he saved his life and left
Frenchmen to fight and die in the cause of his country.
A fierce naval battle took place, and the French admiral
fought until he was overpowered, and had no course left
to him but to surrender. The French officers who had
survived the fight were all taken to Letterkenny, Tone
among the number. Tone was in French uniform, and
might have passed unrecognized as a French officer but that

326 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

an Ulster magnate, Sir George Hill, who had known him
in earlier days, became at once aware of his identity, and
addressed him by name. Tone calmly and civilly replied
to the greeting, and courteously asked after the health of
the wife of his discoverer. Then all was over so far as
Tone was concerned. He was conveved to Dublin and
tried by court-martial as a rebel and a traitor to George
the Third. He defended himself in a speech of remarkable
eloquence — that is, if he can be said to have defended him-
self when his whole speech was a frank avowal of his pur-
pose to fight for the independence of Ireland. He declared
that he thoroughly understood the consequences of his
failure, and was prepared to abide by them. " Washing-
ton," he said, " succeeded, and Kosciusko failed ;" and he
only insisted that in his case, as in that of Kosciusko,
failure brought with it no dishonor. The one sole appeal
which he made was that he might be allowed to die a
soldier's death — that he might be shot and not hanged.
Tone was found guilty, of course; there was no choice
left to the court-martial on that question, and his appeal
as to the mode of his death was refused by the Lord-
Lieutenant. John Philpot Curran, the great advocate,
made a motion in the King's Bench to the effect that Tone
should be removed from the custody of the Provost-Mar-
shal and tried before a civil tribunal, on the ground that
Tone was not in the English army, and that, as the civil
courts were sitting, there was no warrant for the inter-
ference of martial law. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kil-
warden, a man whose public spirit and whose devotion to
law and justice would have done honor to any bench, ruled
in favor of Curran's appeal, and ordered that Tone be
removed from the custody of the Provost-Marshal. When
the Provost-Marshal declined to obey the order the Chief
Justice directed that the Provost-Marshal be taken into
custody, and that he, along with Tone, be brought before
the Court. The decision came too late so far as Tone was
concerned. Eather than endure the ignominy of a public
execution by the gallows, which he believed to be awaiting
.him, he had found means to open a vein in his throat,

1778-1803. ROBERT EMMET. 327

t(

You see I am but a poor anatomist/' he said with a quiet
smile to the surgeon who was brought to his bedside. He
lingered in a half-unconscious state for a few days and
then died. His death was the closing event of the Irish
insurrection of 1798.

There was, however, a sort of afterbirth of the struggle
of " Xinety-Eight " in the attempt hazarded by Eobert
Emmet, to which we have already made anticipatory allu-
sion. Eobert Emmet, the brother of Thomas Addis Em-
met, was a young Irishman of great abilities and of gen-
erous, unselfish, imprudent enthusiasm. He could not
bring himself to believe that the hopes of Irish independ-
ence were buried even in the graves of Lord Edward Fitz-
gerald and ^Yolfe Tone. He had no trust whatever in any
assistance to be given from France, but he set himself to
organize a movement which should be Irish only and
should find its whole organization and its battle-field on the
soil of Ireland. He found numbers of brave and ardent
young men to assist him, and he planned out another ris-
ing, which was to begin with a seizure of Dublin Castle and
a holding of the capital as a centre and a citadel of the new
movement for Irish independence. Emmet's passion for
national independence had been strengthened by the pass-
ing of the Act of Union. The Act of Union had long been
a project in the mind of Pitt, and indeed it was the opinion
of many observers then, and of some historical students
from that time to the present, that Pitt had forced on the
Irish rebellion in order to give an excuse for the absolute
extinction of the Irish Parliament and the centralization
of the system of government in the Parliament sitting at
Westminster. It is, at all events, quite certain that Pitt
accomplished his scheme for a legislative union between
Great Britain and Ireland by a wholesale system of bribery,
the bribery taking the form of peerages, of high-salaried
appointments, of liberal pensions, and even of sums of
ready money. All that was really national in the Irish
Parliament fought to the last against Pitt's Act of Union,
but the Act was carried, and it came into operation on
January 1, 1801 . The Act itself and the methods by which

328 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

it was passed only gave to Robert Emmet a fresh stimulus
to prepare his plans for the independence of Ireland. We
need not follow in detail the story of these plans and the
attempt to put them into execution. Robert Emmet's
projects were, no doubt, all well known to the authorities
of Dublin Castle before any attempt could be made to
carry them out. In any case their chances of success seem
to have depended very much upon the simultaneous action
of a great number of persons in a great number of different
places, and the history of every secret revolutionary move-
ment tells us of the almost insuperable difficulty there is
in getting all the actors of such a drama to appear upon
the stage at the same moment and at the right moment.
Emmet's plan broke down, and it ended not even in a
general rising of the nationalists of Dublin, but in a mere
street riot, the most sad and shocking event in which was
the murder of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden.
While Emmet, in another part of the city, was vainly
striving to retrieve the disorder into which the excesses
of some of his followers had broken up the plan of attack.
Lord Kilwarden's carriage was stopped by a body of un-
disciplined and infuriated rioters, and one man thrust a
pLke into Kilwarden's body. Emmet himself came too
late upon the scene to rescue the Chief Justice, and from
that moment he gave up all hope of anything like orderly
action on the part of the insurgents, and indeed his whole
effort was to get his followers to disperse and to stop any
rising in the adjacent counties. Kilwarden died soon after
he had received his wound, but not before he had uttered the
noble injunction that no man should suffer for his death
without full and lawful trial. Seldom has even the assas-
sin's hand stricken a worse blow than that which killed
liOrd Kilwarden. In an age when corrupt judges and par-
tial judges were not uncommon, Kilwarden was upright,
honorable and just. The fiercest nationalist of the day la-
mented his death. He had again and again stood before the
Crown officials and interposed the shield of law between
them and the victims whom they strove by any process to
bring to death. Emmet made his way into Wicklow with

1803. THE EXECUTION OF ROBERT EMMET. 329

the main purpose of stopping the intended outbreak of in-
surrection there, as he saw now that no such attempts could,
under the conditions, end in anything but useless bloodshed.
His friends urged him to make his escape to France, and he
might easily have escaped but that he went back to Dub-
lin with the hope of seeing once again Sarah Curran, the
youngest daughter of the great advocate, with whom he
was devotedly in love. He was recognized, arrested, and
sent to trial before Lord Xorbury, a judge who bore a very
different sort of reputation from that which honored Lord
Kilwarden. Emmet made a brilliant and touching speech,
not in defence of himself against the charge of trying to
create a rebellion, for he avowed his purpose and glorified
it, but in vindication of his cause and in utter denial of
the accusation commonly brought against him that he in-
tended to make his country the subject of France. He was
found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed on the
morning after his trial. Thomas Moore, the Irish poet,
who was a college friend of Emmet's, has embalmed his
memory in three beautiful songs, " She is far from the land
where her young hero sleeps," she being of course Sarah
Curran, to whom Emmet addressed his last written words;
" Oh, breathe not his name," and " When he who adores
thee," an appeal to Ireland to remember him who had at
least " the pride of thus dying for thee." Washington
Irving, the American author, devoted a touching essay,
called " The Broken Heart," to the story of Eobert Emmet
and his blighted passion. The lovers of romance may be
somewhat disconcerted to hear that Sarah Curran married
after her young hero's death; but she remained single
many years, and there is no reason to suppose that she ever
forgot or disclaimed her affection for Eobert Emmet.
Wolfe Tone's wife married again some sixteen years after
the husband of her youth had passed away. Her grave is
to be seen in a cemetery close to Washington, in the United
States, the land in which Wolfe Tone's widow passed all
the later vears of her life.

With the failure and the death of Eobert Emmet closed
the last rebellious rising in Ireland which belongs to the

830 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxi.

history of the Georges. Pitt's Act of Union is still in
force, but it would be idle to say that it is anything more
than in force. The union between England and Scotland.
to which Pitt's supporters so often triumphantly appealed,
was made under conditions and on terms totally different
from those which had to do with the union between Eng-
land and Ireland.

1793-1816. THE GENIUS OF THE GREAT BONAPARTE. 331

CHAPTER LXII.

NAPOLEON BONAPAETE.

I^OTHING in the history of the world is quite as wonder-
ful as the history of the first Napoleon. No other man
ever rose from so little to so much, ever played a greater
part in the eyes of the civilized world, was more mon-
strous in his triumphs or more tragic in his fall. Every-
thing connected with his strange career was distorted, ex-
aggerated, seemingly out of all proportion to the familiari-
ties, the conventionalities, and even the possibilities of ex-
istence. As the ancient Grreeks, in their sculpture, for the
delineation of their gods permitted themselves the use of
the heroic size and made their immortals and their demi-
gods more than common tall, and more than common
comel}^, so might the modern historian seem privileged in
the use of a superlative style in dealing with a life so phe-
nomenal, so unbounded by the average horizon, so ungov-
erned by the ordinary laws. And yet no more is needed
than the cold statement of the stages in that great stor)%
of the steps which conducted to the summit of the pyramid
onlv to be descended on the other side. Such a statement
is itself the sermon on an earthly glory that was almost un-
earthly in the vastness of its aims and of its gains, and on
a humiliation that restored humanity to reason and re-
affirmed the inexorable lesson. As the mere names of bat-
tles on the commemorative arch appeal to the memories,
the ambitions, and the passions of a military race with a
monumental emphasis that is not to be rivalled by the
painter or writer, so a few simple words serve to contrast
with a simplicity that is in itself a pomp the crowns and
the catastrophes of that amazing visitation. " Corsica,"
" St. Helena," " Brumaire," " i\roscow," " Toulon,"

332 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxii.

" Waterloo." The chronicle of the great conqueror is writ-
ten in little in the names of two islands, two battles, and
two towns.

To Frenchmen, even to the Frenchmen who are most
opposed to him, Napoleon must always be an object for
gratitude and for admiration. The most passionate cham-
pion of the Bourbon lilies and the doctrine of the divine
right of kings cannot refuse to recognize that Napoleon
Bonaparte gave to France a greater military glory than
she had ever known or ever dreamed of before. The most
devout disciple of the principles of '89, the fieriest apostle
of the Eevolution that went down into the dust before the
cunning of Barras and the cannon of the Corsican advent-
urer, is obliged to admit the splendid services that Na-
poleon Bonaparte rendered to his adopted country. The
one antagonist confesses that the Napoleonic eagles flew
with the length of flight and the strength of wing of the
Eoman eagles. The other antagonist sees with approval
the Code Napoleon and the Order of the Legion of Honor,
the Simplon Road and the Canal of St. Quentin, the en-
couragement given to arts, to letters, and to commerce, the
reorganization of finance and the reconstitution of the
army. But to the average Englishman of that time, and
for long afterwards. Napoleon was first and last and al-
ways the implacable enemy of Great Britain. From the
day of Toulon to the day of Waterloo, Bonaparte was the
Big Bogey of England; always either fighting against her
openly or plotting against her secretly, always guided by
one purpose, always haunted by one hope — the conquest
of a country that had learned to look upon herself as un-
conquerable. Pitt, who hated war, was destined to play
the uncongenial part of a War Minister, with one short
interval, for the rest of his life, and to devote his genius
and his energy to a life-and-death struggle with the soldier
of fortune who was yesterday the hero of Italy, to-day First
Consul, to-morrow to be Emperor of the French. The
story of Pitt's life, for the rest of Pitt's life, is the story
of a struggle against Napoleon, a struggle maintained
under difficulties and disadvantages that might well have

1803-16. ENGLAND'S FEAR OF NAPOLEON. 333

broken a strong man's heart, and that seemed to end in
disaster when the strong man's heart was broken.

It looked for long enough as if nothing could withstand
the military genius or sate the ambition of Kapoleon. On
his sword sat laurel victory, and smooth success was strewn
before his feet. He overran Egypt, and dreamed of rival-
ling the Eastern conquests of Alexander. The Kingdoms
of Europe crumpled up before him. On land he seemed
to be little less than invincible. England was only safe
from him because England held the supremacy of the sea.
When the war with France began England was blessed
with an effective navy, and England's fleet was England's
fortune in the days when the conqueror of a continent was
the nightmare of an island. A monstrous regiment of
caricaturists were painting themselves into fame by fan-
tastic and ferocious presentations of the man who was so
fiercely hated because he was so greatly dreaded. Some of
these caricatures are pitifully ignoble, some in their kind
are masterpieces; all are animated by a great fury that is
partly the outcome of a great fear. For years that fear
was always present; for years it was always well within
the bounds of possibility that the fear might be realized
in a great national catastrophe. In every coast town of
England men volunteered and drilled and manned de-
fences, and scanned with anxious eyes the horizon for the
sails that were to fulfil a menace more terrible than the
menace of the Armada. England's military fame had
dwindled on the battle-fields of Europe; England's
strength at home was as nothing compared to the strength
that France could employ against her if once France could
obtain a landing on her shores. Xapoleon had declared
scornfully that the country with the few millions of men
must give way to the country with many millions of men.
All that he needed to reduce England, as he had reduced
so many other of the kingdoms of the earth, was to place
his armed majority where it could act with overwhelming
force against an armed minority. Only one thing lay
between him and his purpose, but that one thing was the
navy of England. Xapoleon knew that if he had but com-

334 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxii.

mand of the Channel for a very few hours the landing of
which he had dreamed, and for which he had schemed so
long, would be a reality, and a march on London as easy
as a march on Vienna. But he never got those few hours'
command of the sea. Perhaps no greater monument of
human vanity exists than the medal which Napoleon,
madly prophesying, caused to be struck in commemoration
of the conquest of England. Perhaps no pages of all the
pages of history are more splendid than those which record
the triumphs and the glories of the English fleet in the
mortal struggle with France. When the great war began
it was well for England that her navy was in effective con-
dition ; it was perhaps better still that the traditions of her
navy were rich with heroic deeds, examples splendid to
emulate, hard to surpass, but which, however, the sailors
of King George the Third were destined to surpass.

Yet the conditions of life under which the English sailor
lived were scarcely of a kind to foster the serene, austere
virtues of patriotism and heroism. The English sailor
was often snared into the active service of his country
sorely against his will by means of the odious instrument
for recruiting known as the press-gang. His existence on
board the mighty and beautiful men-of-war was a life that
at its best was a life of the severest hardship, and that at
its worst was hard indeed to endure. He and his fellows
were herded together under conditions of indescribable
filth, squalor, and discomfort, often foolishly ill-fed, often
cruelly ill-treated, often the victims of intolerable tyranny
from brutal superiors. It is sometimes little short of
marvellous that the sailors on whose faith the safety of
England depended should have proved so faithful, so cheer-
ful, so desperately brave. There was, indeed, a moment
when the faith of some of them failed, and when the safety
of England was in greater jeopardy than it had been in
since the crescent of the Armada was reported off Ply-
mouth or the Dutch ships lay in the Med way. While the
war with France was still in its gloomy dawn the unwis-
dom of treating British sailors worse than beasts of burden
came near to wrecking the kingdom. In 1797 the crews

1797. MUTINIES IN THE BRITISH NAVY. 335

of very man}^ of the King's ships were exasperated by ill-
treatments and injustices of many kinds, exasperated most
of all by the fatal folly of long arrears of pay — a folly
which in France, but eight years earlier, had been one of
the most powerful factors in aiding the spread of the
Eevolution. There came a point when the sense of injury
seemed too hard to bear, and England was startled by the
news of a mutiny at Spithead. But the mutiny, if alarm-
ing, was kept within moderate bounds and under control
by the mutineers ; it was temperately met and temperately
dealt with by Lord Howe, and it soon came to an end. It
was immediately followed by a far more alarming mutiny
which broke out among the ships at the Nore. This
mutiny, headed by a seaman named Parker, who proved
himself a bold and daring spirit, swelled swiftly to serious
proportions. Londoners saw the mouth of their river
blockaded by the war-ships of England, saw their capital
city fortified against the menaces of the men they relied
upon as their saviors. Admiral Duncan, busily engaged in
keeping a Dutch fleet cooped up in the river Texel, sud-
denly beheld almost the whole of his squadron desert him
and sail away to join Parker and his fellow-mutineers at
the N'ore. It was one of the gravest crises in English his-
tor}^ one of the greatest perils that England had to face
during the whole of the French war. But the danger was
weathered, the peril overcome. The Government faced the
dangers of mutiny as firmly as they had faced the dangers
of the war. Whatever the provocation, mutiny at such a
moment Avas a national crime. It flickered out as tamely
as it blazed up fiercely. Parker and some of his fellow-
conspirators were hanged, strong men dying unhappily,
and once again England had only her foreign foes to
reckon with. Over away by the Texel stout-hearted Dun-
can, with only his flagship and two frigates to represent
the sea power of England, met the difficulty with a shifti-
ness worthy of Ulysses. Through all his long hours of
loneliness he kept on gallantly signalling away to an
imaginary fleet, and the Dutchmen in the Texel little
dreamed that they were held in check by a deserted admiral

336 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxii.

upon a desolate sea. When at last they emerged, Duncan's
danger was over ; his faithless vessels had returned to their
faith, and the crushing victory of Camperdown consoled
one of the bravest of the brave for an agony unrivalled in
the story of the sea.

The British admirals are the heroes of the dying eigh-
teenth century. " Admirals all, they said their say, the
echoes are rising still " — in the words of Henry Newbolt's
gallant song. " Admirals all, they went their way to the
haven under the hill." Dundonald was called, and finely
called, the last of the sea-kings; but they were all true
kinsmen of the Vikings, the admirals who were famous
figures in Dundonald's fiery youth and famous memories
in Dundonald's noble age. And as the admirals
were, so were the captains, so were the men. Fearney
sticking the surrendered swords in a sheaf under his arm ;
Walton calmly informing his superior that " we have taken
or destroyed all the Spanish ships on this coast: number
as per margin," are typical figures in a tradition of a
courage so superlative that Admiral Sir Eobert Calder,
who fought very gallantly and took two ships, was tried
by court-martial and severely reprimanded for not having
destroyed the French fleet. The age of George the Third
would be memorable, if it were memorable for nothing
else, for the deeds and the glories of the great sea fights
and the great sea fighters who saved England from in-
vasion, knocking the tall ships of France to pieces, taking
monstrous odds with alacrity,, eager to engage in all
weathers and under all conditions, cheerfully converting
what seemed an impossible task into not merely a feasible
but an easy piece of business. There are some sea battles
of that time, fought out in storm and darkness, which read
in the tamest statement with the pomp and beauty of the
most majestic music. The names of the great admirals
must always be dear to English ears, must always sound
sweet on English lips. St. Vincent, Collingwood, Howe,
Duncan, the noble list proceeds, each name illuminated
with its only splendid story of desperate enterprise and
deathless honor, till the proudest name of all is reached,

1758-1805. NELSON. 337

and praise itself seems to falter and fall off before the
lonely grandeur of Xelson. jS'ever was a little life filled
with greater achievements; never was a little body more
compact of the virtues that make great captains and
brave men. The life that began in the September of 1758
and that ended in the October of 1805 holds in
the compass of its forty-seven years the epitome of what
England meant for Englishmen in the days of its greatest
peril and its greatest glory. Magnificent, magniloquent,
turbulent, it is starred with glowing phrases as thickly as
with glowing deeds. " Fear ! I never saw fear : what is
it ?" " A peerage, or Westminster Abbey ;'' the immortal
signal ; the famous saying off Copenhagen : " It is warm
work; this day will be the last to many of us, but I would
not be elsewhere for thousands;" the pathos of the dying
lover : " Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair ;"
and the pride of the dying hero : " Thank God, I have
done my duty " — all these things are the splendid orna-
ments of a splendid career; they gleam on his story as his
stars and orders gleamed upon his breast when the " Vic-
tory " renewed her name. With the battle of Trafalgar
and the destruction of the allied French and Spanish fleets
jSTapoleon's dream of England's conquest came to an end.
The result was bought at a great price, the price of Nelson's
life. But Nelson had done his work, and done it well. He
saved his country ; he had deserved well of his countrymen ;
he summed in himself all the qualities that made the Eng-
lish sailor the idol of his people and the terror of his foes.

While Nelson still lived and conquered, there came a
check to the troubled supremacy of Pitt. In 1801 — when
the memories of the battle of the Nile and the defence of
Acre were still fresh in men's thoughts, and Napoleon had
been for a year First Consul — Pitt, baffled by circum-
stances, surrendered to mediocrity and Addington was
Prime Minister in his place. For three disastrous years
Addington was permitted to prove his incompetency, till
in 1804 Pitt, as the only possible man, came back to power
to face a Napoleon more menacing than ever, a Napoleon
now, in that same year, crowned and triumphant as Em-

338 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxii.

peror of the French. England was Mistress of the Seas,
but Napoleon was Master of Europe. Pitt's health was
fading swiftly; he watched with despair the progress of his
enemy. Ulm came, and Austerlitz, and Austerlitz struck
Pitt at the heart.

The closing hours of Pitt's career were as troubled and
as gloomy as its dawn had been radiant and serene. It
may have cost him little to be reconciled with the pompous
mediocrity of Addington, and thereby to placate the King.
His nature could afford to be magnanimous to the un-
grateful incompetency that was able only in betrayal.
It need not have given a pang to that proud and
lonely spirit to welcome into the Cabinet the Earl of Buck-
inghamshire, who had wedded the one fair woman whose
heart Pitt had won and lost. But the anguish of his soul
was wrung into expression by the fall of Dundas. He had
loved Dundas, who was now Lord Melville, long and well.
Lord Melville's conduct as Treasurer to the Navy pro-
voked from the Opposition a series of condemnatory reso-
lutions. In spite of all that Pitt could do, the resolutions
were supported by many of his followers, by many of his
friends, by one friend conspicuous among all, by Wilber-
force. The division was neck and neck, 216 to 216; the
Speaker, " white as a sheet," gave the casting vote against
Dundas which stabbed Pitt to the core. Whether it were
or no, as Wilberf orce maintained, a " false principle of
honor " which led the great minister to support Melville,
Pitt felt the blow as he had felt nothing before and was to
feel but one thing again. Pitt pulled his little cocked hat
over his forehead to hide his tears. One brutal adversary.
Sir Thomas Mostyn, raised the wild yell of triumph that
denotes to huntsmen the death of the fox. Another savage,
Colonel AVardle, urged his friends to come and see " how
Billy looked after it." But the young Tory gentlemen
rallied around their hero. They made a circle of locked
arms, and with looks and words that meant swords they
kept the aggressors off. In their midst Pitt moved uncon-
sciously out of the House — a broken-hearted man.

The heart of Pitt was allowed to feel one pulse of pride

1806. DEATH OF PITT. 339

and pleasure before it ceased to beat. Pitt shared in the
triumph of Trafalgar; he made his best and noblest ap-
pearance in public; made his last most splendid speech:
" Europe is not to be saved by any single man," he said to
those who saluted him at the Guildhall as the savior of
Europe. " England has saved herself by her exertions, and
will, I trust, save Europe by her example.'' A few weeks
later, in the December of 1805, Pitt was at Bath, when a
courier brought him the news of the battle of Austerlitz.
The news practically killed him. He had long been ailing
grievously. Sir Walter Farquhar's account of Pitt's
health, lately made public by Lord Eosebery, proves that
the bod}^ which cased that great spirit was indeed a ruined
body. Grief and anxiety had stamped lines of care and
sorrow upon his face, which gave it what Wilberforce af-
terwards called " the Austerlitz look." The phrase is
famous and admirable, if not exactly accurate as used by
Wilberforce, for Lord Stanhope shows that Wilberforce
never saw Pitt after the battle of Austerlitz was fought.
With the Austerlitz look on his face, Pitt travelled to Lon-
don, to the villa now known as Bowling Green House at
Putney. With the Austerlitz look on his face he surren-
dered himself to the care of his niece. Lady Hester Stan-
hope, who afterwards lived eccentric and died lonely in
the East, a kind of desert queen. With the Austerlitz look
on his face he bade that niece roll up the map of Europe :
^' It will not be wanted these ten years." With the Auster-
litz look on his face he died on January 23, 1806.

England, that had lost in three months Nelson and Pitt,
was to lose a third great man in only eight months more.
Pitt's body lay in Westminster; Pitt's Ministry was dis-
sipated into air; Pitt's great opponent was called to the
otTice for the last time, and for a very short time. Fox, as
we are told by his biographer, Lord Eussell, never felt per-
sonal enmity to Pitt. He said, with generous truth, that
he never gave a vote with more satisfaction than his vote
in support of the motion to pay Pitt's debts and to settle
pensions on his nieces. He could not and did not indorse
the proposal to confer honor on the memory of Mr. Pitt

340 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxii.

as an " excellent statesman." He was ready to take office
in the Ministry of All the Talents that Lord Grenville
gathered together. He became Foreign Secretary and
Leader of tlie House of Commons.

Fox, in office as out of office, had three great questions
closely at heart: the treatment of Catholics, peace with
France, and the Slave Trade. But Fox in office was
obliged to face and recognize the difficulties, the solution
of these questions. He admitted, reluctantly, the inad-
visability of pressing the Catholic claims at a time when
such pressure would prove destructive alike to the claims
and to the Ministry that maintained them. He admitted,
reluctantly, that the prospect of peace with France was
very far from hopeful. He still dreamed of a speedy aboli-
tion of the Slave Trade, and to this end he attended
Parliament too persistently in defiance of the warnings of
his failing health. He was tapped for dropsy; his condi-
tion grew worse; in the evening of September 13, 1806, he
died. He was the greatest liberal of his age; the greatest
friend of liberty. The Irish poet bade the Irish banshee
wail for him on whose burning tongue, truth, peace, and
freedom hung.

Fox was not long dead when the Ministry of All the
Talents found itself in direct collision with its royal mas-
ter. It had ventured to suggest that it should be permitted
to Catholics and to Dissenters to serve the King and the
country in the Army and Navy. This small concession
was too vast for the bigotry of George. He would have
none of it, and the obsequious Ministry consented to
abandon the measure. This was not enough for George.
He wanted to extract from the Ministry a formal promise
in writing that it would never submit to the sovereign any
measure that involved, or was in any way connected with,
concessions to the Catholics. The Ministry was not obse-
quious to that ignoble degree. It refused to bind itself
by any such degrading pledge ; and, in consequence, it was
turned out of office, and the Duke of Portland and Mr.
Perceval reigned in its stead. The Ministry of All the
Talents had lived neither a long nor a useful life.

1769-1852. ARTHUR WELLESLEY. 341

Spencer Perceval was an able lawyer, a dexterous debater,
a skilful Parliamentarian. He was privately an excellent
man, with an excellence that the irony of Sydney Smith
has made immortal. He was not quite the man to sit in
the Siege Perilous that had been occupied in turn by Pitt
and Fox. He held his office under difficult conditions. In
1810 the King, whose ailing mind was unhinged by the
death of his daughter Amelia, lost his reason irreparably.
Perceval had to fight the question of the Kegency with a
brilliant Opposition and a bitterly hostile Prince of Wales.
He succieeded, in the January of 1811, in carrying his Re-
gency Bill on the lines of the measure proposed in 1788.
In May, 1811, he was shot dead, in the Lobby of the House
of Commons, by a madman named John Bellingham, who
had some crazy grievance against the Government.

The years from the January of 1811 to the January of
1820 are technically the last nine years of the reign of
George the Third; they are practically the first nine years
of the reign of George the Fourth. The nine years of the
Regency were momentous years in the history of England.
The mighty figure of Napoleon, whose shadow, creeping
over the map of Europe, had darkened and shortened the
life of Pitt, was still an abiding menace to England when
the Prince of Wales became Regent. But England, that
had lost so much in her struggle with the Corsican con-
queror, who had now no Nelson to oppose to him on the
high seas, and no Pitt to oppose to him in the council
chamber, found herself armed against his triumphs in the
person of a great soldier.

In the same year that saw the birth of Napoleon, and on
a date as little certain as that of the conqueror of Europe,
a child was born to Garret Wellesley, first Earl of Morn-
ington, in Dublin. The child was a son, the third that
Anne Hill, Lord Dungannon's eldest daughter, had borne
to her music-loving husband; the child was christened
Arthur. Dates as various as May 1, May 6, and April 29,
1769, are given by different authorities in that very year,
and the place of birth is as unsettled as the date, Dangan
Castle in Meath, and Mornington House, Merrion Street,

342 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxii.

Dublin, being the alternatives offered. Very little is known
about the childhood and early youth of Arthur Wellesley.
His mother seems to have considered him stupid, and to
have disliked him for his stupidity. He went from school
to school — first at Chelsea, then at Eton, then at Brussels
— without showing any special gifts, except a taste for
music, inherited no doubt from the father, whose musical
tastes had earned him the affection of George the Third.
An unamiable mother decided that he was " food for
powder and nothing more ;" and when he was sixteen years
old he was sent to the French Academy at Angers, where
he was able to learn all the engineering that he wanted, at
the very same time that the young Napoleon Bonaparte
was being trained for a soldier in the military college at
Brienne. Of the little that can be known of the first sev-
enteen years of Arthur Wellesley's life the clearest facts
are that his childhood was not happy, that he was believed
by many to be a dull and backward boy, and that he him-
self thought that if circumstances had not made him a
soldier he would probably have become distinguished in
public life as a financier.

Circumstance made him a soldier. Through the pat-
ronage of his eldest brother, who became Earl of Morning-
ton on his father's death, in 1781, the young Arthur
Wellesley entered the Army as an ensign in the Seventy-
third Foot. The same influence that had got him into the
army aided him to rise in it. When he was little more
than of age he was captain of the Eighteenth Light
Dragoons, aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland,
and member of the Irish Parliament for his brother's
borough of Trim. In the Irish Parliament he supported
Pitt's measure to enfranchise Eoman Catholics. It was
characteristic of the young man that, when once a career
had been chosen for him, he devoted himself to it with a
cold, persistent zeal that accomplished as much for him
as the most passionate enthusiasm would have done for an-
other. He set before himself the principle that having
undertaken a profession he had better try to understand
it, and understand it he did with a determined thorough-

1786-97. WELLESLEY'S MILITARY TRACING. 343

ness that was rare indeed^ if not "ankno^vn, among the
young officers of his day. We are told that soon after
he got his first commission he had one of the privates
of the Seventy-third weighed, first in his ordinary mili-
tary clothes, and then in heavy marching order, in order
to ascertain what was expected of a soldier on service.
This kind of thoroughness, at once comprehensive and
minute, distinguished the conduct of his whole career.
One of the maxims that regulated his life was always
to do the day's business in the day. Long years later
he and a friend were driving together along a coaching
road, and amusing themselves by guessing what kind of
country lay behind each hill they approached. When the
friend commented upon the surprising accuracy of his
companion's guesses the man who had been Arthur
Wellesley answered : " Why, all my life I have been try-
ing to guess what lay on the other side of the hill;" a
stimulating piece of wisdom, to which he himself supplied
the no less stimulating comment: "All the business of
war, and, indeed, all the business of life, is to endeavor to
find out what vou don't know from what you do." The
youth who took soldiering in this iron spirit must have
been more than a puzzle to many of his contemporaries,
whose simple military creed it was that when an officer was
not actually fighting he might best employ his time in
drinking and gambling. Young Wellesley fell in love with
Catherine Pakenham, Lord Longford's daughter, and she
with him; but the means of neither permitted marriage
then, and they did not marry until long years later. When
the war with France was forced upon a reluctant minister,
Wellesley went to the Continent under Lord Moira and
saw some fighting. But his serious career began when he
was sent to India with the Thirty-third Eegiment in 1797.
It was in India that the young soldier was to learn those
lessons in the art of war which were afterwards to prove
so priceless to England, and to gain a fame which might
well have seemed great enough to satisfy any ambition less
exacting than his. But he had the generous greed of the
great soldier, the restless, high-reaching spirit, to which

344 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. Lxii.

the success of yesterda}^ is as nothing save as an experience
that may serve for the success of to-morrow. No better
field than India could have been found for a young and
ambitious soldier who had devoted himself to his career al-
most by chance, but who was resolved to approve his choice
by giving to the career of arms a zeal, a stubborn pertin-
acity, a very passion of patience, rare, indeed, at the time,
and who was resolved to regard nothing as too great to at-
tempt, or too trivial to notice, in the execution of his duty.

After a career of military honor and experience in In-
dia, Arthur Wellesley began his struggle with Napoleon
on the battle-fields of the Spanish Peninsula, and ended it
upon the battle-field of Waterloo. His was the hand that
gave the final blow to the falling, failing Emperor. The
career of so much glory and of so much gloom, of Corsican
lieutenantship and Empire, of Brumaire and Bourbon
Restoration, of Egyptian pyramids and Eussian snows, of
Tilsit and of Elba, and of the Hundred Days, ended in
the Island of St. Helena. There exists among the docu-
ments that are preserved from Napoleon's youth a geo-
graphical list made out in his own boyish hand of names
and places, with explanatory comments. The name of St.
Helena is on the list, and the only words written opposite
to it are " Little Island." The Preacher on Vanities never
had a better text for a sermon. The " little island " that
had then seemed so unimportant became in the end more
momentous than the Eastern Empire of his dreams. The
man who had made and unmade kingdoms, who had flung
down the crowns of Europe for soldiers of fortune to
scramble for as boys unto a muss, was now the unhonored
captive of ungenerous opponents, the unhonored victim
of the petty tyrannies of Sir Hudson Lowe.

As the most disastrous event of the reign of George the
Third prior to the Regency was a war with America, so
the most disastrous event of the Regency was a war with
America. Napoleon's fantastic decrees of commercial
blockade levelled against England, and known as the Con-
tinental system, had embroiled the young republic and
England, and differences inflamed by the unwisdom of

1812-15. THE WAR OF 1812. 345

Perceval were not to be healed by the belated wisdom of
Castlereagh. Two keen causes of quarrel were afforded by
England^s persistent assertion of the right to stop and
search American vessels on the high seas for British sub-
jects and England's no less persistent refusal to recognize
that naturalization as an American citizen in any way
affected the allegiance of a British subject to the British
crown. Wise statesmanship might have averted war, but
wise statesmanship was wanting. The death of Spencer
Perceval caused the elevation to the premiership of a man
as incapable as his predecessor of dealing skilfully with
the American difficulty. Eobert Banks Jenkinson, who
had been Lord Hawkesbury and who was now Lord Liver-
pool, was a curiously narrow-minded, hidebound politician
who had never recovered from the shock of the French
Ee volution, and who was chiefly conspicuous for his dogged
opposition to every species of reform. He was five years
old when the fight at Concord began the struggle tliat
ended with American Independence, but the great event
which overshadowed his childhood had no apparent effect
upon his later judgment. This belated survival of the
tradition of Hillsborough thought and said that America
ought to look to England " as the guardian power to which
she was indebted not only for her comforts, not only for
her rank in the scale of civilization, but for her very ex-
istence." Folly such as this could only end in disaster.
America, believing herself to be deeply wronged, declared
war on Great Britain in the June of 1812. The war lasted
more than two years with varying fortunes. Once again
the scarlet coats of English soldiers were familiar, if de-
tested, objects to many of the men who had made the Re-
public, and over bloody battle-fields fluttered that English
flag which most of those who now opposed it had only seen
as a trophy of their fathers' victories. Both sides fought
under heavy disadvantages. If England was weakened
by her struggle with Xapoleon, America was hampered by
internal dissensions, by a disorganized army and by a navy
so small that it might almost have been regarded as not in
existence. Yet it was this very navy which did most for

346 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. ch. lxii.

America in the struggle, and dealt England the most stag-
gering blows inflicted upon her supremacy of the sea. The
most shameful episode of the whole unhappy campaign was
when the English General Eoss captured Washington, and,
in obedience to infamous orders from home, burned the
Capitol and other public buildings. No more disgraceful
act stains the history of the time. It proved as impossible
for England to defend as for America to forget. The war
ended at last, after the commerce of both countries had
been gravely injured, in a grotesque treaty of peace, signed
at Ghent, in which the principal cause of the war, the im-
pressment of American sailors by English ships, was not
even alluded to. But as the impressment was abandoned
by England, the war had not been waged wholly in vain.

In the year that followed upon the Battle of Waterloo,
Sheridan died. He had outlived by ten years his great
contemporaries Pitt and Fox, by nearly twenty years his
greatest contemporary Burke, and by more than thirty
years his great contemporary Johnson. The pompous
funeral that carried his remains to Westminster Abbey was
the funeral not merely of a man but of an age. He was
almost the last of the great heroic figures that made the
eighteenth century famous. He had long outlived all the
friends, heroes, rivals of his glorious prime: he could talk
to the children of the dawning century of Johnson, and
Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Eeynolds; of Burke, and Pitt,
and Fox; of poets and painters, players, and politicians,
who seemed to his listeners to belong to a departed Age of
Gold. Two years later, in the November of 1818, Eng-
land, and indeed the whole civilized world, received a sud-
den and painful shock by the death, under conditions pe-
culiarly harrowing, of Sir Samuel Romilly, the great law-
yer, social reformer, and philanthropist. Romilly had
been deeply attached to his wife, and on her death in Oc-
tober of that year, it would seem that he must have lost
his reason, for, in the following month, he committed
suicide. Romilly was a man of the highest principles, and
the most austere conscience, and although the loss of his
much-loved wife must have made the world but a mere

1818. SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY. 347

ruin to him, it is not believed that, if his mind had not
suddenly given away, he would have done himself to death
with his own hand. To Napoleon, then fretting in exile
in St. Helena, the deed appeared to be one curiously char-
acteristic of the English people. " The English character
is superior to ours. Conceive Eomilly, one of the leaders
of a great party, committing suicide at fifty because he had
lost his wife. They are in everj^thing more practical than
we are; they emigrate, they marry, they kill themselves
with less indecision than we display in going to the opera."
Napoleon was wrong in his estimate of Romilly's age.
Eomilly was sixty-one when he died. He was one of the
greatest legal and social reformers of his age. His father
was a Huguenot watchmaker who had settled in London,
and the 3^oung Samuel Eomilly had only an imperfect
education to begin with. By intense study he became pos-
sessed of wide and varied culture. He studied for the
bar, became distinguished in Chancery practice, made his
way in public life, sat in the House of Commons for several
years, and finally represented Westminster. During suc-
cessive visits to France he had made the acquaintance of
Diderot and D'Alembert, and became the friend of Mira-
beau. He won a noble fame by his persistent endeavors to
mitigate the cruelties of the criminal laws, to introduce
the principles of a free country into political prosecutions,
to abolish the odious spy system, and to put an end to
slavery at home and abroad. His name will be remembered
forever in the history of political and social reform.

The Houses of Death and of Birth were busy for the
royal family in the closing scenes of the King's tragedy.
There had been very little happiness for George the Third
in his long reign and his longer life. His childhood had
been darkened by the shadow of a family feud that seemed
traditional in his line. His marriage, indeed, fortunate
if unromantic, the sequel of more than one unfortunate ro-
mance, gave him a companion whose tastes were as simple,
and whose purposes were as upright as his own. But his
private domesticity was not destined to be less troubled
than his public fortunes. The grim tradition asserted

348 A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. CH. ixn.

itself again for him whose childhood and manhood had
heen only too devoted to the influence of his mother. Few
of his children were a cause of joy to him; some were a
source of very poignant sorrow. He might have known
content in a private station under conditions better fitted
to strengthen his virtues and to lessen the force of his
defects. If Farmer George had really been but Farmer
George, his existence might tranquilly have followed the
courses of the seasons through a prosperous manhood to
a peaceable old age. But the curse of kingship was upon
him very heavily, and his later years are very pitiful in
their loneliness and their pain. Of the course of events
about him he, in the awful visitation of his infirmities, had
long been unconscious. Blind and deaf and mad, he seems
to have been haunted by the ghastly fancy that he was
already dead. " I must have a suit of black," he is reported
to have said, " in memory of George the Third, for whom
I know there is a general mourning." George the Third was
dead in life, and about him those he loved were dying fast.
On November 6, 1817, the Princess Charlotte died, the
only child of the Prince Eegent. She was very popular,
was in the direct succession to the throne ; she hoped to be
queen, and many shared her hope. The prisoner of St.
Helena believed that in her lay his best chance of libera-
tion. She married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg on
May 2, 1816, and died after giving birth to a still-born
child in the following year. She was not quite twenty-
two years old. The news of her death greatly affected the
old queen, her grandmother. Her health, that had long
been weak, grew weaker, and she died on November 17,
1818. She had lived her simple, honest, narrow, upright
life for seventy-four years. On May 24, 1819, a daughter
was born to the Duchess of Kent, the wife of Edward,
Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third. On
January 23, 1820, the Duke of Kent died. Six days later
(he King ceased to exist. He was in the eighty-second year
of his age and the sixtieth year of his reign. The most
devoted loyalist could not have wished for the unhappy
King another hour of life. " Vex not his ghost 0 ! Let

1760-1820. PROGRESS UNDER GEORGE THE THIRD. 349

him pass; he hates him that would upon the rack of this
rough world stretch him out longer."

The reign that had ended was certainly the longest and
perhaps the most remarkable then known to English his-
tory. The King's granddaughter, the Princess Victoria,
born so short a time before his death, was destined to a
reign at once longer and more remarkable than the reign of
George the Third. The England of 1820 was not nearly
60 far removed from the England of 1760 as the England
of the last year of the nineteenth century was removed
from 1837. But the changes that took place in England
in the sixty years of the reign of the third George were
changes of vast moment and vast importance. If Eng-
land's political fortunes fell and rose in startling contrast,
the progress of civilization was steady and significant. The
social England of 1820 was widely different from the
social England of 1760. The advance of population, the
growth of great towns, the increase of means of inter-
course between one part of the country and another by
highways and waterways, the engineering triumphs that
bridged rivers and cut canals, the marvels of industrial
invention that facilitated labor, the patient pains of science
on the edge of great discoveries, the slowly increasing
spirit of toleration, pity, and humanity, the gradual spread
of education, the widening realms of knowledge, the in-
creasing appreciation of the decencies and amenities of
life — all these things make the reign of George the Third
the hopeful preface to the reign of greater length, greater
glory, greater promise and greater fulfilment that was to
dawn when two more sovereigns of the House of Hanover
had ceased to reign over England. If George the Third
had been a wiser man his reign would have been happier
for the country he ruled; but the country at least was
happy in this, that he was, as kings went, and according
to his lights, a good man.

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

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